Twitter Retweet Changes – Reply to Post Needed

Twitter recently changed how the re-tweet feature works. Technically they added the feature to the core of Twitter where it had been an ad hoc feature of many of the clients. But, I will let you read all about it on Biz and Evan‘s blogs.

I want to discuss a problem this creates, propose a two-step solution, and solicit your help getting the word out.

Problem:

• When you re-tweet someone you often add a comment to the tweet. The new way of re-tweeting does not allow this. I understand why they did this and agree with their logic, but we still need a solution.

Solution Step 1:

• Add a comment on the re-tweet as a separate tweet.

Example:

• @giddytab says, “A friend’s 3YO just sneezed a piece of apple up into her nose cavity.”
• I re-tweet and then add a second tweet that says, “@giddytab, Ouch that sounds painful.”

Pros of this solution:

• Original author gets to see who re-tweeted and can easily find replies to their tweet.
• Original author can tell which tweet you are replying to even if you are replying hours later.
• Your readers will be able to see what you are commenting on even if they do not follow the person you are replying to.

Missing feature: Reply to Post

• Currently you can reply to another twitter user by typing @ and their username, but when you do it it sometimes hard to tell which tweet you are replying to.
• Step 1 would help in some cases but we can solve all cases and make the proposed solution work better by adding Steps 2 and 3.

Solution Step 2:

• Start using @ and the status in addition to @username (both for now, but hopefully only one later)
  • Example: @giddytab @54321234 Ouch that sounds painful.

Solution Step 3: This step needs to be done by Twitter and the clients.

• I suggest that Twitter make it so that users will see @status-number as a reply to them without the @username being required so that we can keep those tweets short.
  • They could still show the username online and on client. It would just help keep the tweets short.
  • Yes, I realize this kind of exists already but it does not work well and an explicit reply to post would really help.
• I also suggest that Twitter group those replies to specific tweets together with the original tweets on twitter.com and in the API

I need your help with a few things:

• First, will you tweet this idea? You can just link to this post or you can actually discuss the idea on twitter and your own blog.
• Then if you have additional (or alternative) ideas, would you comment here so we can discuss?
• Then will you help me request that the reply to post feature be added? You can send tweets to @biz and @ev

Thanks!

Related posts:

1. TwitterTools just about killed my Twitter Usage
2. How to include only the tweets you want in your blog
3. What is twitter, anyway?
4. FriendFeed is cool, but still needs work.
5. Twitter Updates for 2008-02-16