Twitter announced that it intends to add a retweet option to its service as well as the API. Retweeting has basically become a huge part of the Twitter culture, but it is not a function that is readily available on Twitter itself.
Users have to actually take the time and to enter the information themselves. Co-founder Biz Stone acknowledges that this can be “cumbersome”. Twitter is calling the initiative “project retweet.” Stone explains on the Twitter Blog:
Phase one of project retweet is to show the developer community how it will work from an API perspective as well as a user perspective. We’re still working out the final details, but this sketch gives you the basic idea. Let’s say you follow @jessverr, @biz (that’s me), and @gregpass but you don’t follow @ev. However, I do follow @ev and the birth of his baby boy was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers.
Imagine that my simple sketch is your Twitter timeline. You’d see @ev’s tweet even though you don’t follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have. (The star, reply, and retweet options only show up when you hover over a row on Twitter.com which is why you don’t see them all the time.) Also, if you find my retweets annoying, then you’ll be able to turn them off.
Twitter doesn’t quite have it worked out how the feature and API will work. Either way, developers and users can expect the feature to launch within the next several weeks.
