Great, I think this is much better and provides a better way of identify which tweet is a retweet and which is not.
/Amitab Follow Twalle @mytwaller On Sep 30, 4:08 pm, Marcel Molina <mar...@twitter.com> wrote: > We've updated the retweet payload to look a lot more like a regular > tweet's payload. We find this change makes the retweet API > conceptually simpler, easier and more convenient to work with and > better overall. I've linked to examples of the new payload below, and > will be updating documentation shortly, but first I'd like to share > some background on what we've learned working on the retweet API over > the past few weeks. > > One of the big objectives of the retweet feature is discovering new > users to follow. We wanted the original status and its author > highlighted front and center so they get due credit for the tweet > someone you follow found worthy of retweeting. To that end the API was > designed to emphasize the original tweet by having it be the top level > object. Embedded within it we provided details about who retweeted it > and when. > > Though this makes a statement to how we'd like the feature to be > thought about, logistically it doesn't degrade gracefully for clients > who don't implement any retweet logic in their code. Tweets appear in > timelines from people who you do not follow and unless clients > differentiate those tweets visually letting you know that someone you > follow has shared this tweet, confusion ensues. > > To mitigate this, we opted to not include retweets into the existing > friends timeline. Instead we created a new parallel home timeline that > would be just like the friends timeline but included retweets. That > way developers could opt in to the retweet feature at their leisure. > Even with this opt in policy, though, there is still a critical > responsibility imposed on developers to clearly communicate to their > users that a given tweet in their timeline is a retweet and who the > retweet is from. The likelihood that confusion would result turned out > to be too high. > > Additionally, with the original status as the top level object in the > payload, that means consumers of the API would receive what appears to > be the same tweet multiple times. In a lot of cases that's fine, in > others it's problematic. > > After experimenting with this approach we've decided that it's a > better bet to craft a payload that will degrade far more gracefully. > So we've redesigned the retweet payload. Rather than having the > original tweet as the top level status with embedded details about who > retweeted it, the retweet is the top level object and within it we > include the original tweet and its author. You'll have full access to > the entire retweeted status and user as well as the original tweet and > its user. So you don't have to make any additional API calls and > should have everything you need to display a retweet distinctively > with attribute to both the original author and the retweeter. In other > words, these retweeted statuses look a whole lot like regular > statuses. This new design was our instinct to begin with and we > probably should have gone with it. We think it's better and hope you > do too. All the same documented resources will exist. Only the > payloads change. > > The following timeline should contain examples of the updated retweet > payload. You can use this to test consuming retweets. > curlhttp://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/testiverse.xml > curlhttp://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/testiverse.json > > In the event that new tweets go into the above timeline that push the > retweets out, you can access a few directly at the following urls: > curlhttp://twitter.com/statuses/show/4452134416.xml > curlhttp://twitter.com/statuses/show/4452466408.xml > curlhttp://twitter.com/statuses/show/4349744308.xml > > The above payloads don't contain a "retweet_count" element yet and > they probably will. Other than that we don't suspect any more major > changes as we approach a full public launch. As always, though, we're > open and solicitous of everyone's feedback. > > Thanks. > > -- > Marcel Molina > Twitter Platform Teamhttp://twitter.com/noradio
