A fair amount of interest today as Twitter brings out a new development.  Only on trial for developers and unlike Facebook Lite, only developers were told initially; everyone else was told by Biz Stone via the blog.  A good start.

The new idea is to create a 'ReTweet' button so not rather than writing 'RT' and copying a friend's tweet in, now you just hit a button that does it for you.  One slight difference: rather than appearing in the timeline as a tweet for you, it will appear under the original author (even to those who follow you and not the original tweeter).

Here's a diagram by Biz Stone to illustrate those words. A Nice Picture, by Biz.Age 35:



There's been a fair amount of discussion as to why this is good.  For one, in the future where copy and paste skills are no longer required this is a great start - one click and you're done.  Officially it's to extend the use of social media in sharing contacts that you may not have, and get talking.

In theory, this basically means that by seeing a re-tweeted user's picture appear in your timeline you're may be more inclined to follow them.  Whilst before, I would write the quoted @ name in my tweet, the quoted @ user gets their face in every timeline of anyone following you. Click for a visual.

So by displaying the original's picture to your audience are they more likely to follow him?  In terms of laziness, it's easier to quickly judge this by looking at the avatar rather than clicking on a username to find out.  So yes, perhaps.

"But we can't post pithy and witty comments!" in the main complaint.  Wait, sit down in your seats.  Project Retweet as it's known (there are more stages to come, hold on tight) doesn't in any way disallow the old way.  So if adding humorous one liners before a tweet is your thing, you'll still be able to.  Below is an example (minus pith and wit in this case) but still appropriate:



So, it still works - but you may have to revert to the strenuous task of copy and paste.  Get some practice in before the future comes, I recommend.