If you're a regular Twitter user, you know that re-tweeting (RT) is a very common practice. In fact, it's been referred to as, "the highest form of compliment on Twitter," because it means that someone has found your tweet interesting or valuable enough to send out to their network as well. There are even tools like Retweetist that track, measure & rank Twitter users based on the number of RT's s/he receives. All this said, the practice of retweeting is devolving, and I for one don't like what I'm seeing.
The easiest and "most formal" way of retweeting is simply to copy & paste the original tweet with RT + the user's @ handle in front of the tweet. (Some Twitter applications even do this for you in a single step) It's also acceptable to insert some comment of your own in front or at the end of the tweet. Less formal but still ok is to use the person's tweet first and credit them at the end, e.g. "(via @[theirhandle])." This is less "fair" in my opinion because I think readers are less inclined to process the credit to the original source than to the re-tweeter, but at least the originator is credited.
Now, there are a lot of gray areas of re-tweeting. For example, if you're linking to an article but don't mention the source in your tweet, you're not giving 100% credit to that source. Still, you're not really re-tweeting anyone and you're still helping to drive traffic to the article. This is the article's intent for existing in the first place, so this practice isn't awful. BUT, many tweeters use tracking URLs to measure traffic they drive to these links, and what is not cool is when retweeters replace the original URL with their own. This could break the tracking chain for the original tweeter, depending upon their tracking solution, and in my opinion, doesn't give fair "credit" (tracking clicks) to the original tweeter. This is not, however, the worst offense.
The worst tweetjacking offenders, or "Twitter cheese," as my good friend @CarlosHernandez coined, are those who tweet content *as if it's their own* without EVER crediting the source!! This is a real sore spot for me, and should be for anyone who's ever taken more than five minutes to compose their thoughts, opinions or facts into a cogent article. How is this tweetjacking not plagiarism? How is this not some kind of infringement, even if some might argue it can't be copywrite infringement?
I say, down with these lowlife tweetjackers!! And if you know better and haven't thought it mattered, think again next time before you tweet something someone else produced or the links they use. C'mon Tweeps, let's give credit where credit is due.
Comments [1]