Twitter retweet to share tweets

Having moved its Lists feature out of beta recently, the social media service, Twitter is currently beta testing a new way for users to see who’s talking about their tweets.

The new ReTweet, or RT, features appear only for a select few users but add a handy icon to tweets that have already been retweeted and the option to view only retweets for a particular tweet made by people you follow.

They’re headlining the new service as “Retweet to Share Tweets”, which is the basic ethic underlying the retweet system in which one Twitter user duplicates someone else’s tweet and adds “RT @othertwitter” to the front of the retweet so that these special tweets gain added value for @othertwitter.

Twitter says about the new retweet system:

We’re still working out the final details, but let’s say you follow @2020science, @sciencebase (that’s me), and @DrRemy but you don’t follow @biz. However, I do follow @biz and his recent breakfast choice announcement was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers.

You’d see @ev’s tweet on your timeline even though you don’t follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have. (Star, reply, and retweet options would only show up when you hover over a row on Twitter.com which is why you don’t see them all the time.) But, if you find these retweets annoying, you’d be able to turn them off easily.

Are you in the retweet to share tweets beta? What do you think of it?