When to RT or not to Retweet
January 22nd, 2009 by Jerell | Filed under Support, Twitter.I love to retweet (RT) great items that I see on Twitter, and sometimes I am the 3rd or 4th person to RT the item. But this also wastes our valuable 140 character acreage, but I wanted to know if this was really necessary to give credit to the original Tweeter, or just a polite thing to do. So I looked into it. Believe it or not Twitter actually has a policy on retweeting or as they like to call it: “Reposting others’ content without attribution”.
Twitters rules state that:
Reposting others’ content without attribution is against the Twitter rules
Re-posting another person’s updates without giving them credit and without their permission is a violation of Twitter’s rules. Â Accounts re-posting others’ updates (with or without crediting the author) Â may be immediately suspended because:
- Re-posting others’ updates, regardless of stating authorship, is a potential form of spam
- Re-posting others’ updates as one’s own without giving credit to the original author is tantamount to plagiarism
If an account is aggregating or re-posting others’ updates for a legitimate reason, such as collecting and re-posting all updates with the word “dream” into @dreamtweets profile, it’s ok as long as the original author is credited for their update.
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/26257/entries/16205
So if I understand this policy correctly, you must give credit to the original author of the tweet, however you do not need to give credit to all of the additional people who RT it before you see it.
Which makes sense since we only have 140 characters to work with. So we don’t have to include RT upon RT when we RT. .. but then again, it is the polite way to tweet. Â
What is your personal policy on RT’s and ReTwittering?
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UPDATE 22 JAN 2008
Thank you to @Kristie McNealy for catching the following line:
Re-posting another person’s updates without giving them credit and without their permission is a violation of Twitter’s rules.
Does this mean You have to asker permission to RT before you RT then? Lets find out.
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I include all RT out of courtesy, unless they don’t all fit. In that case, I always just RT the original poster, or rather the FIRST poster I see it having come from.
I think it is not only in the rules but a nice thing to do. It just looks rude to act like it was your idea - unless another post tells everyone to tweet a contest, etc. That would be an exception to that rule.
I couldn’t fit an RT one time and @reply to individual to let him know the tweet was awesome, but too long to tweet, and he responded and Gave me permission to not credit so it fit as it was powerful and anyone can benefit from that. I did that however, the very next tweet, I credited the Twitter who gave me the permission and let peeps know who that came from. I think it’s courtesy and even with permission I just didn’t feel right about it. This is a great post especially for newbies!
I try to give credit to whom I’m retweeting as a Retweet or via@. Like reporters give credit to their sources. For me it’s pretty much the same thing. It’s rude and disrepectful when you don’t.
Many times I have seen people taking credit for my tweets. I can tell by the way I word things and the same url shortener links.
I’ve even seen people retweeting me but replacing my links with theirs in a voting situation. Makng it seem like I was telling others to vote for them. I find that is straight up unacceptale and plagiarism.
I think one need only RT the first poster - he/she started it!
Sometimes I give credit to the original poster and other retweeters if there’s room, and sometimes it’s just a RT to the latest RTer (I’m not consistent about it).
If I find an interesting article on a website that I know has a Twitter account, even if I’m not sure that person tweeted the link I try to give credit, eg. “Check out this interesting article (from @website)”. On top of it being nice to give credit, it’s helpful to give people an idea of where the link is headed.
I never RT without credit. What really throws me for a loop is the “without their permission.” How many of us put “Pls RT” at the end of every tweet!? What we think might be slightly relivant could turn out to be super relivant to someone else and beg an RT. Shouldn’t we leave that up to individuals rather than having to ask for it? I assume no one would tweet something they DON’T want RTed! Pretty silly if you ask me.
I think that Twitter’s are not aimed at re-tweeters but at people that copy an entire twitter stream from another person. There were a few such spammers when Twitter first gained traction (I remember that @doshdosh was one of their victims).
Re-tweeting is a relatively new phenomenon and a great way of spreading information around different networks so I can’t imagine Twitter wanting everyone to ask permission. I agree with the other commenters - giving credit is the right thing to do.
As a former journalist, I tend to attribute everything. I’ve found in the world of blogs there are a lot of content thieves (or as my friend Ryan calls them “Hambloglers”).
I attribute as much as possible, because it sure would make me mad if someone were taking credit for my ideas.
Interesting. I usually just hit the RT button and, if it doesn’t fit, I’ll remove some of the @’s, but I think I’ve been removing them from the wrong end.
I figure I should credit the person that put it in my stream, not necessarily the original poster, since I would actually not be able to authenticate who the original poster actually is, but I guess I should be doing it the other way around
Reading, I find it silly to see RT @a RT @b RT @c something c said.
If c said it, give credit to c. I don’t much see the point of trying to credit everyone along the way. The extra layers just get between the reader and the message.