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Twitter Changes Are Impacting Interactions

Gus Wagner

Recently, Twitter changed the way retweets are presented. Since the beginning of the platform, we were limited to 140 characters in any tweet – original or retweet. That has now changed and is messing up the lives or twitterers on a daily basis.

Now when you retweet someone on the native platfom – desktop or mobile – you have the option of just blasting the original message out to your followers or adding up to 140 characters of your comments or content. The original tweet then appears either as an attachment or a link, depending where you are reading it, instead of being shown within a message.

The Problem With New Retweeting

The problem this change has created is when someone retweets with the native Twitter.com, there is no longer a notification to the original twitterer (OT) someone has retweeted their content. In the previous function, and in third-party platforms like Hootsuite, the OT gets a ping that someone has mentioned him/her/them. Then the OT can be polite and send gratitude for the RT or determine if there is any further action to be taken. Check out the screencast video I made highlighting this issue.

The Solution to the Problem with New Retweeting

People, businesses, organizations, and nonprofits who tweet as an important part of their living know the drawbacks of using the native Twitter.com functions. Even the mobile app itself lends to it not being very helpful for professional use. This is why we use third-party platforms like Hootsuite (Full disclosure: I am a #HootAmb) to manage and monitor our social media actions. A huge part of monitoring our activity is mentions. If there are no mentions in the new retweeting function then, honestly, money is being left on the table. The solution is to use a program like Hootsuite, Buffer, even Tweetdeck to control all of your social media actions, even retweets.

Still need help conquering Twitter? Here are a couple more posts of ours which you may find helpful.

How To Succeed At Twitter

How to Set Up Your Twitter Correctly From Day One

How to Live Tweet Events

Need more help? Email me at Gus@RocketGroupLLC.com, tweet me (where I will catch up the fastest) @RocketGroup, send up a flare, whatever, let’s talk.

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Gus Wagner

Gus Wagner is the President.Owner of The Rocket Group – an award-winning marketing and communications firm. The Rocket Group has specialized in building effective tools across traditional means and new media for clients in businesses, organizations, and nonprofits since 2001. Gus is also a five-time certified Social Media Strategist, a former Chief of Staff in the Missouri State Senate, a retired national champion amateur hockey coach, and a would like to be a singer/songwriter. His Welsh Corgi, Taffy, lets Gus and his wife, Farrah Fite, live with her in Jefferson City, Missouri.