Twitter recently added a feature to allow you to forward your tweets to everyone who follows you. The action is called a ReTweet.

If you’re already up on both skis, you’ll find the Twitter announcement as new & exciting as a PBS special on Covered Bridges.  “Why?” you say.  One simple reason:

The ReTweet is not new.

That’s right.  We’ve been retweeting for as long as we’ve been tweeting on Twitter.  The new part is that the Twitter interface on the web at Twitter.com (finally) has a little button that allows you to retweet and spot the retweets of others.  It’s less about innovation and more about recognizing the retweet as an integral part of the Twitter experience.

How the West was Won (or How we ReTweeted Back in the Early Days)

If someone you follow had a simply remarkable Tweet (for who knows what reason!) and you wanted to share this tweet with the people that follow you- you would copy and paste the tweet into your own New Tweet text box and put “RT” in the front of the message.  Here’s an example:

I received:

@SmartGuy32 : New study says Elephants can fly! Full report here: http://www.mit.edu/bleh

I sent:

RT @SmartGuy32 : New study says Elephants can fly! Full report here: http://www.mit.edu/bleh

Brilliant isn’t it?!  You can quickly pass information and give credit to the original tweet.  Brilliant! Pass me a Guiness!

The RT (Yes ReTweet. You know it now so we’ll use savvy lingo!) is arguably one of the best parts of Twitter.  Plus people get a kick out of seeing their own tweet being retweeted.

Twhirl Me Around

You can tweet from Twitter.com.  Those that Waterski the Web use a program to keep above the water on Twitter.  I use Twhirl and it’s great!  We’ll have another post talking about the variety of programs out there.  Twhirl, and programs like it, built in a button to allow you to retweet and they did it a “long time ago” (really, ages ago in Internet speed).

So you can see now why those of us using powerful software like Twhirl to read, send and retweet give a little chuckle when Twitter finally catches up to us.

Extend my Network, already!

Didn’t the title talk about extending my network? If you’re looking to grow the size of who follows you then you’ll want to check out this post.  If you still want more, and I would- not to worry, there will be more about growing your numbers (in the right way).

In addition to (re)introducing the (re)tweet, the point of this post is to point out how retweets extend the effective range of your own network.  It does this in a pure and simple, spam free way:

Important and interesting information travels.

You might only have 15 followers, but if you tweet something really interesting (to those that follow you), you’ll often see your tweet being retweeted.  And it doesn’t necessarily stop there.  Their followers might also find it interesting and the number of RTs has no bounds.  In this way, content is king.  On Twitter, its often much more about what is said than who said it.  A boring RT from Ashton Kutcher won’t get nearly as far as a link to a new, rabidly insightful blog post.

So if you’re new to the retweet, welcome!  Get out there and be a part of an awesome human network!