What is a “retweet”or “retweeting”?

Have you ever received an interesting email and forwarded it to your friends?  You know, like a funny joke or a breaking news item that you thought would be of interest to your friends so you hit the “forward” button on your email client to pass that message on. That’s kind of what “retweeting” is except in this case it applies to Twitter messages rather than an email.

 

< | ^ Examples

Why bother to RT [Retweet]?

Passing on of interesting message across circles.

The originator @username more exposure.

You establish yourself as community/social person.

By RTing, you demonstrate that you know how to retweet and that you are a more advanced Twitter user to your followers. This will help you retain your followers who may think of you more highly than someone that merely posts meandering Tweets about mundane things. (Like when you brush your teeth for example!)

If you retweet good content, you spread goodwill to your followers. this increases the retention of your followers.

Every time you retweet, the originator is notified of your message. Meaning, the person being retweeted will get the message in their “@ replies” inbox. This will increase the chances of the originator following you (if they are not already following you) or they may very well return the favor and retweet some of your more interesting tweets!

The majority of Twitter users are accustomed to “retweeting” important news items to a point where news is spread very quickly from the original source to the entire Twitter community. For example the Tsunami news and the Mumbai bomb blast or the Mumbai Train blast news. It was all over Twitter before it actually made it to the news channels.

Apart from this if you can tell of any other advantages of RTs please leave a comment.