I see value in a retweet API. I disagree on your first point. Retweets have been around for some time and still happen quite a bit. No decrease in usage. (its even showing in sites like mashables retweet button and http://iphone.tomtom.com/ (look at the share button)).
The only issue I see is that not everyone will flip over to the new system immediately so it will not be fully adopted into the system and inconsistent across clients for a while. Point 3, no one says that you have to add support for it. However unifying the retweet functionality drastically simplifies consumption of retweets and outweighs any slight input requirements and an API complexity required for it. Point 4, I think you missing the point of how it would work internally. As I understand it, the original 140 char message stays intact. Point 5, I'm confused with what point you are trying to get across. Zac Bowling On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 2:00 AM, Paul Kinlan<paul.kin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Guys, > When I saw the original message stating that the retweet API I was about to > say straight away that I despise the idea, but I thought I would refrain - > give it some thought. I still despise the idea and I have to make it known > the reasons why I think it is a very very bad idea and in the long term will > negatively affect Twitter as a communications platform for the future. > > You are embedding a user developed based meme into the Twitter > infrastructure - the popularity of RT itself may wane after some point. > Users are very fickle, they change their minds, take a stand and don't > listen to them - you know your platform and I am pretty sure you know that > this is a bit of a hack. Let users use they system how they want, they will > evolve how they use it, constraints via an API > > Twitter already has the capability to do smarter things > that completely negate the need for this API if they just change the current > API a little > > Not every app will use RT API (especially legacy ones) and not every user > will use it and as such Twitter and this list will get lots of questions why > certain RT's are accessible by the retweet API. Again, RT's are a user > concept, and is very easy for them not use. > Whilst I use TweetDeck, I really dislike the amount of utility buttons it > has and the amount of options it has - introducing another API for another > function is tantamount to the same thing, you are asking us app developers > to include more options in our apps. The great thing about a RT is that I > just hit reply and type RT at the front. > A big thing that people have requested is that quite often there is not any > room in the very limited 140 characters to add comment to a retweet, this > doesn't seem to solve that problem. > Authority of a user based on a RT and credit to the originator is a > misnomer, no one actually needs it, very very few people care about - and > when they do care about not getting the credit for the original tweet you > have to ask why do they care? and why should we care? again it is still very > easy to bypass. If you have a problem with it, as per the Twitter TOS you > are the copyright holder of your content. > > My honest vote is not to pollute the Twitter API with a special RT > capability, rather: > > Enhance Favorites and the favorites API, allow me to get a list of > everyone's favorites, allow me to see a list of people who favorited a > tweet. If you look at the proposal for RT API it is doing something similar > to this. The entire UX for Favorites makes a lot more sense than retweet - > infact you can go as far as saying if you like something favorite (star) it, > if you really like your favorite - Forward (RT). > > Allow me to get a list of a users favorites (similar to the "Likes" feed in > FriendFeed) - this type of concept is so powerful, I can discover people who > share very similar likes. I can also do Best of Day very easily > > Enhance in_reply_to, allow me to see all tweets that reply to this tweet in > an object returned by the current api ( that is so I don't have to > keep re-querying the search API), further more allow me to request N levels > deep of replies to a given tweet (yes this is similar to threaded comments) > > So by enhancing Replies and favorites you can remove the need for special RT > API because you can combine both parts of the API to get at the originator > of a popular tweet, have notification and visual queues of popular tweets. > thus keeping the twitter API simple. > Paul - grumpy - Kinlan > http://twitter.com/PaulKinlan
