Using Twitter lists is the best way to organize the people you follow on Twitter. Before Twitter launched this feature, the only way to organize your contacts was via a 3rd party desktop application like Tweetdeck or Seesmic. Now you can create a list on Twitter and access that list on any desktop application, so you don’t need to keep recreating them.

So what are you using lists for? Many people on Twitter seem to be creating lists for the sake of creating lists; e.g. “Awesome people” and “Interesting to follow”. But did you know that you could use Twitter lists to further your professional and personal goals? Here are several creative ways to use Twitter lists.

1. Industry Peers and Professionals Lists

Use Twitter lists to keep up with the latest news in your industry. If you’re in advertising, create a list of other advertising professionals. If you’re a doctor, create a list of fellow medical professionals. For example, I’ve created a Twitter list for advertising and marketing professionals.

You can find individuals in your industry by searching on Twitter directories like Twellow, or list directories like Listorious. Not only will this help you keep up with the latest trends, but can help you network; these other professionals might be more inclined to follow you if they see you’ve placed them on a Twitter list!

2. Expert Lists

If you are an expert in a subject, create a list of other experts in a subject. This will not only keep you updated on the latest in your expert field, but it will establish your credibility as a thought leader in this field. Others interested in this field will follow your list, so you will benefit from this visibility. Or follow experts on a subject you are interested in, but are not an expert in yourself.

For example, Michael Zhang (@petapixel) has created a Twitter list for Best of Photography. Over two thousand people are following this list to get updates on photography, so that gets Michael a ton of visibility.

3. Networking Lists

Twitter can be a valuable networking tool. If there are individuals in your field you want to connect with, place them in their own list. This way, when looking for retweet opportunities, you can refer to the list of individuals you want to network with. Retweeting their content will get their attention, and this can spark conversation. For example, I’ve created a Twitter list for Boston ad agencies. So when I want to reach out to others in my field and in my city, I can quickly refer to this list.

4. Company Employee Lists

Create a list consisting of fellow employees at your company and the actual company Twitter account. Instead of naming this list “coworkers,” as you may switch companies every few years, name this list your company name, so you can refer back to this individual list years from now to see what your former coworkers from that time are up to. It’s a great way to keep in touch in addition to building your LinkedIn network.

If you control your company’s Twitter page, create a list of your employees; your customers and fans are probably interested in who is behind your brand. Even go so far as to create lists for the separate departments in your company.

5. Niche Lists

You can find people on Twitter who are interested in any niche topic. Want to find some new recipes?  Want to find some new books to read? Fascinated by the American revolution period? Want to travel the world? Gary Arndt (@everywheretrip) has created a list for travel:

Listorious makes it very easy to find lists already created on thousands of topics, so you can browse these lists to find people you also want to list.

6. Fan Lists

Create lists for people who are interested your brand. You can easily find people who mention your brand by doing a Twitter search. You may not want to follow everyone who mentions you, especially if you’re in control of a large brand’s Twitter page, but you may choose to follow influential people or those that tend to interact with your brand’s Twitter page a lot.

7. Friends Lists

Make a list for your real-life friends! I keep my friends list private, and I always have a dedicated column for my friends in Tweetdeck. This way you can easily keep up with the people who matter to you most.

8. Event Attendee Lists

If you attended a conference (or are excited about an upcoming conference), search for individuals you met or hope to meet and organize a list for each conference. Keep the program after a conference and search for speakers you heard or interesting people you met. This is a great way to keep in touch, network, and find out about future conferences you’d be interested in attending. It’s also a valuable way for people not able to attend the event to follow your list and get the latest updates from home.

9. Celebrity Lists

Following celebrities on Twitter can be fascinating, but they can clog up your Twitter stream if you follow too many of them. And each of these celebrities, though having thousands or millions of followers, only follow a few people themselves, so you shouldn’t expect much reciprocation. Instead of following them, create a Twitter list for them. This way you can Twitter-stalk them when you’re in the mood for celebrity gossip, but ignore them the rest of the time.

Bloggers Blog (@bloggersblog) has created a massive list of celebrities on Twitter:

10. Research Lists

List can be helpful when researching a topic. If you need to stay current on a topic for work, set up a Twitter list with experts actively tweeting on this topic. Taking the time to research and build these lists will help you find the valuable information your looking for. And if you publicly share your lists, you have another way to boost your credibility when people follow your lists.

11. Role Model Lists

Are there people on Twitter that you aspire to? Perhaps they’re the top bloggers, or most charitable people, or successful individuals in your industry? Set up an inspirational list for yourself that you can look to when you need some motivation.

12. Job Search Lists

Looking for a job? If you’re out of work (or just looking for a switch), create a list of companies you’re interested in working or recruiter accounts to monitor the latest job postings. And if you are just looking for a switch, it’d obviously be best to keep this list private.

13. Affiliation Lists

Twitter is a great place to promote your affiliations. If you’re controlling a company blog and want to encourage your followers to follow partner companies or relevant people on Twitter, create a list for this. Or if you’re a social media blogger, create a list of other social media bloggers you’ve created partnerships with.

14. Geographic Lists

You may want to create a list for people on Twitter in your city or neighborhood. As I mentioned above, although I have a general list for advertising and marketing professionals, I have a separate list for these professionals in the Boston area. Creating location-based lists can help you network or even mingle with the people in your neighborhood.

15. Interactive People Lists

There are tons of people on Twitter who follow others for the sake of getting more followers themselves. But there are also those people on Twitter who are genuinely paying attention to you. Create a private list for people who interact with you, so you can refer to this list when looking for retweet opportunities, so you can return the favor. Or if you have a question, you can direct it at these individuals who are likely to actually answer!

How else do you use Twitter lists? Share your strategies in the comments below!

Google Buzz is the latest hot topic in social media. Whether it will ultimately be a hit or a flop, many blogs are already incorporating the button into each post, just like Tweetmeme’s retweet button and Facebook’s sharecount button.

There are several plugins and methods you can use to add the Google Buzz button to your Wordpress blog, at least until Google comes out with an official button. Here are the best methods I’ve found for adding Google Buzz as a share count button, a sidebar widget, and a social share chicklet:

Google Buzz Share Count Button: WP-Buzzer

Although there are several varieties of Wordpress plugins, WP-Buzzer by Hameedula is the must customizable button in terms of placement of the button in your post. This is important to bloggers who want to line up the Google Buzz button with other share count buttons (such as Tweetmeme and Facebook sharecount). As you can see below, I’ve chosen the default “float: right” position, so the button will line up with my other Twitter and Facebook buttons.

How to line up Google Buzz button with Tweetmeme’s Retweet button:

If you already have the Tweetmeme button installed, this Google Buzz button doesn’t line up correctly at all. Additionally, the button is kind of clunky; you can see the pixilated edges. We’re going to fix that.

1. Upload the wp-buzzer plugin to your blog. Do not yet activate it.
2. Save this png file to your computer as googlebuzz.png:
3. Upload this image to the folder /wp-content/plugins/wpbuzzer
4. Go to your installed plugins page and click “edit” under the wp-buzzer plugin.
5. Search for the following text: background-image: $style = ’style=”height: 58px; width:50px;  background-image: url(‘ . WP_PLUGIN_URL . ‘/wpbuzzer/wpbuzzer-google-buzz-big.png)
6. Change “wpbuzzer-google-buzz-big.png” to “googlebuzz.png”
7. Add “padding-top:12px;” after “width:50px;”
8. Click save. That should be it!

Google Buzz Sidebar Widget: Google Buzz ER

The Google Buzz ER widget will display your public Google Buzz content on your blog. Simply upload the plugin to your blog, and in the plugin settings enter your Google username, create a title, and define how many Buzz posts you want to appear in the widget. Then go to your widgets page, where you can drag and drop the widget wherever you want it to appear.

Google Buzz as a Social Chicklet: Light Social

I’m sure all the major social bookmarking plugins will soon include Google Buzz as an available social chicklet (I use SexyBookmarks here, and they have not yet). The Light Social plugin is one of the early adopters to add the Google buzz button. Plugins like this automatically insert a set of social chicklets, or share links, at the bottom of each of your blog posts.

Have you integrated Google Buzz into your blog yet? Which Google Buzz plugins are you using?

For people who still haven’t joined Twitter, it can seem confusing, overwhelming, or downright ridiculous. I know many people who still haven’t joined only because they find the lingo confusing. What do all those symbols and weird words starting with “tw” mean?

There are online glossaries like Twictionary and Twittonary that track the terminology that has developed on Twitter, but nobody really speaks like that on Twitter. If they did, would you actually want to follow them? I certainly wouldn’t. This isn’t meant to be a megalist of “The Thousand Twitter Terms You Should Know.” These are the most common Twitter terms; the only terms you’ll need to know in order to make sense of Twitter, so it can be a fun experience instead of a confusing one. 

Technical Twitter Terms

@(Username) – At Reply – When referring to another individual on Twitter, you can link to their profile in your tweet by prefacing their username with the @ symbol. For example, you can say something to me by adding @dianafreedman to your tweet. Go ahead, try it now.

RT @(Username) – Retweet – RT stands for retweet. A retweet is essentially a copy/paste of someone’s tweet that you think is interesting. The proper way to retweet me, for example, would be to preface my tweet with RT @dianafreedman and then send it out to all your Twitter followers. Twitter recently added their own retweet functionality so that all you have to do is click a button in order to retweet someone. Tweets with links to interesting content are the most common tweets to be retweeted.

# – Hashtag – On Twitter, this pound sign (#) is known as a hashtag. It prefaces terms that are referring to a trend or event. People attach these terms to their tweets so when others search for this trend or event in a Twitter Search, their tweets will appear. For example, I attach #LOST to all my references of the TV show Lost, #sb44 referred to the Superbowl, #ipad referred to Apple’s new iPad, and #gfail is often used when Gmail is down.

DM – Direct Message – DM stands for Direct Message, which is a private message sent from one Twitter user to another. People often use DMs when their conversation on Twitter is too long to have publicly, so they don’t annoy the rest of their followers with endless tweets, or to exchange contact information.

Fail Whale – Twitter is susceptible to downtime, and when the site goes down a cartoon image of a whale being carried by birds appears. This is known as the “Fail Whale.”

Follow – Following someone on Twitter is like friending someone on Facebook, except you can follow them without them having to follow you.

Common Silly Twitter Words

Tweeple or Tweeps – People on twitter. That’s right; people actually say stuff like this. It’s kind of embarrassing.

Tweetup – When Twitter people meet in person, sometimes as an event in a major city

Twitter Stream – Refers to the stream of Tweets you see on your Twitter homepage, consisting of the Tweets of the people you follow

Twittersphere or Twitterverse – Refers to the entire world/culture of Twitter.

Common Twitter Trends

#FollowFriday or #ff – Used on Fridays to suggest people who are interesting to follow on Twitter. These tweets often look like this: “#followfriday @dianafreedman @mashable @ovrdrv”

#MusicMonday – Used on Mondays to suggest music to your followers or shout out your favorite song(s) of the week.

#ThankfulThursday – Used on Thursdays to tell your followers what you’re thankful for.

There are several other daily twitter memes but these are by far the most common.

That is all the Twitter terminology you need to be familiar with to make sense of Twitter. The rest is just a bit ridiculous, and you don’t need to know it. At all. I mean seriously, “I twought I twaw a twuddy twawt” made it into Twittonary.com. If I ever said that on Twitter, at least 10 people would unfollow me immediately. And any blog post that lists hundreds of these words is just trying to show off their ability to create massive lists of useless information.

Which common Twitter terms would you add to this list of the most common terms used?

Want to encourage your visitors to follow your company or blog on Twitter? Here by popular demand is a wide selection of “Follow Us” twitter badges for your website, based on the popular “Follow Me” twitter badges.

Just save the image of your choice, add it to your website or blog, and link it to your Twitter profile. If you have any suggestions, or requests for color or a different Twitter badge size, please comment below and I will add them as soon as I can.

If you use one of these images, donations or links back to this site are much appreciated!

Please do not link directly to these images. Instead, download the one you’d like to use and upload it to your own site. You may not take these images and host them on your own site for download by your own visitors. Thank you!

Looking for Twitter badges that say “Follow Me”?

Have you noticed an increase in tweets and Facebook updates having to do with checking in, or becoming a mayor of something? Has this caused you to stare at their updates in utter confusion? If so, your friends have joined FourSquare, a location-based social network to help you connect with friends using GPS via your mobile device.

Although it’s not the first location-based service to exist, visits to the site have increased 50% between December ’09 and January ’10, and increased 200% since November. So what has made FourSquare so popular? Hopefully the following walkthrough will end your confusion:

Walkthrough of FourSquare Setup

Since FourSquare can be a bit confusing if you’re a newbie, let’s quickly walk through how to get set up:

1. Head over to FourSquare’s website to set up an account.
2. Since this application isn’t any fun without friends, use their friend finder to import friends via Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook.
3. Link your account to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Again, this is all about friend connections, so I’d recommend this.
4. Get FourSquare on your mobile device. You can find FourSquare for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre.

Alright, now you’re all set to begin checking in. A check-in is something you theoretically will do every time you arrive at a destination.

How to Check In on FourSquare

The procedure may vary a bit depending on your mobile device, but I have a Droid so that’s what I’ll be describing.

1. Log in to your brand new FourSquare application
2. Your GPS will automatically find places near you now. If you see your location on the list, select it and check in.
3. If you do not see your location, bring up your menu screen and click “Search.” Search for the name of your location. If the location comes up, select it and check in.
4. If you still do not see your location, bring up your menu screen and click “Add Venue.” Enter the venue name and address, and click “Add Venue.” Search for the venue you just added, and check in.

How to see what friends are up to

Seeing your friends’ activity on FourSquare is very easy. On the homepage of your mobile application, you’ll see a “Friends” tab. This tab is a newsfeed of all your friends’ whereabouts. A great benefit of FourSquare is that if you check the app when you go out at night and a friend is at a bar nearby, you could stop by and say hi. 

Of course, use your best judgment here, as this could prove to be an awkward situation if you’re just an acquaintance or Twitter follower. But if you’re at a conference looking for like-minded people to meet up with, or want to find out where your Twitter followers at the conference are hanging out, FourSquare can be a very useful tool.

Adding Tips and To-Dos

One factor that makes FourSquare unique from other location-based applications are the tips and to-dos. You can submit tips about locations to let your friends and the general public know key things about a venue. It could be a weekly discount, a must-see museum exhibit, a VIP promotion, etc. You can also enter this item as a “to-do” if you haven’t done it yet. Once you check off your to-do as a tip, and once other people check off that they’ve completed your tips and/or to-dos, you will be rewarded with points.

You can add tips and to-dos from your mobile device (select the location, then bring up the menu and click “Add a Tip”) or from the FourSquare website. As you and other people in your city use your mobile FourSquare more and more, you will find the GPS tips to be a valuable way to find out about drink specials, dinner discounts, theater discounts, etc. as you roam your city.

FourSquare is a game

FourSquare isn’t just a device to let your friends know where you are, but it’s also a game.

Points: You earn points for every check-in (and no, you can’t cheat and check-in to the same place 10 times in a row). You get more points for being adventurous (exploring different parts of the city), going to multiple places in the same day, for your tips that other people try, and for to-do’s you complete.

Mayorship: If you’ve checked in to one location the most, you’ll become the Mayor of that location. This might sound completely ridiculous, but soon you’ll find yourself feeling territorial over your mayorship status; remembering to check in to maintain your status, and competing with your friends. And since some restaurants and bars are now offering free drinks to the “Mayor” of their business, people are finding incentives to check in often.

The benefits of joining FourSquare

In summary, these are the benefits of joining FourSquare:

1. Let your friends/followers know where you are if you want to be found (at a conference, at a bar, situations where you’re looking to be social). If you don’t want to be found, there’s an instant solution for you: don’t update your FourSquare!
2. Get discounts at participating businesses for being the mayor of their locations. As FourSquare takes off, we will see this become more prevalent, especially in large hubs like New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco
3. Find tips on where to go near you, wherever you are. We’ve all been in that situation where we’re downtown with friends and can’t decide where to go for dinner. Now you’ll be able to find other people’s tips and to-dos via GPS to make your decision easier.
4. It’s a game. It’s fun!
5. It’s very possibly the next “big thing,” just like Twitter was, so you might as well try it out to know what it’s all about. If you don’t like it, delete your account.

Also, don’t overthink it. I didn’t participate in Four Square for a while because I was convinced that it was a stalker tool. But then I realized that my application wasn’t going to automatically update my location, and I don’t have to check in to every place I go.

Have you joined FourSquare yet? What do you like about it? What don’t you like? What third party applications do you think would make FourSquare an even better utility?

Social media is quite a hot topic right now. Companies are putting their marketing dollars into social media instead of traditional direct marketing tactics. The media and celebrities are on a tweeting frenzy. Everyone and their mother (literally) are on Facebook. “Social Media experts” have sprung up left and right, claiming to know how to get thousands of followers in just days (they’re called autofollow scripts, get over yourselves).

Although social media is changing the face of marketing, there are some of us that need to be reminded to stop taking things so seriously. So here are some of the funniest videos about social media, some ridiculing the “experts,” some mocking the social media addicts, and some just taking things to an extreme… on the altar. But it’s all in good fun.

Twouble with Twitters: Supernews

A young man struggles against the pressure to Twitter his life away. The sequel Celebrity Twitter Overkill! isn’t as funny.

25 Things I Hate About Facebook

A parody of the “25 Random Things” meme that went around Facebook a few months ago.

Facebook in Reality

What would it be like if Facebook was actually played out in real life?

Twitter in Real Life

Similarly, what would it be like if Twitter was actually played out in real life?

The 5 Ways to Become A Social Media Douchebag

From the blog Tremendous News, this video mocks the claimed “social media experts” on Twitter. *Warning – Explicative Language*

At My Wedding Twitterring and Facebooking at the Altar

This video is another reminder of how we shouldn’t let Facebook take over our lives.

Tweetlejuice

Is someone on Twitter tweeting boring tweets? @them with #tweetlejuice #tweetlejuice #tweetlejuice and see what happens.

The Social Media Guru

Another video that mocks the “social media experts” that are being hired by companies who know nothing about social media. *Warning – Explicative Language*

Flutter: The New Twitter

As Twitter-mania reaches new levels, Slate V presents a mockumentary about a company that wants to take microblogging to the next level

Twitter Whore

Pokes fun at the “Twitter Whores” that tweet every tiny mundane detail of their lives.

Can you add any videos to the list? Comment below!

Here are some free Twitter backgrounds with an office theme! Feel free to use, share, and distribute these backgrounds. If you would like to add your own photo, links, and contact information, you can open these jpeg files in a photo editing software like Photoshop or Gimp, a free photo editing software.

If you don’t want to customize your background, no problem; you can simply upload to Twitter as is.

Want updates when new backgrounds are available? Follow me @dianafreedman.

Preview | Download

Preview | Download

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Preview | Download

Preview | Download

Follow me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook for updates on more free designs.

There are literally hundreds of URL Shorteners to choose from. TinyURL was the first URL shortener to gain popularity, and because of Twitter, demand for URL shorteners has grown exponentially. There’s bit.ly, snipurl.com, owl.ly, cli.gs, su.pr, is.gd, badurl.com, tr.im, short.to, 6url.com, just.as, tiny.cc, kl.am, adjix.com, notlong.com, xr.com, and that’s just to name a few.

Who has time to sort through all of these links? Stating the obvious, these sites all pretty much do the same thing: shorten links. But there are some features that make bit.ly a step above the rest (and if you want to follow along, I suggest registering for a bit.ly account first):

1. Track Clicks

Being able to track all clicks makes us analytics dorks very happy. Let’s use one of my blog posts as an example: Free Twitter Badges for Your Website or Blog, for which I’ve created the bit.ly http://bit.ly/freebadges.

After creating a bit.ly, you access the click stats through your bit.ly history and click “Info+”. You can also access the stats by entering your bit.ly followed by a plus sign (http://bit.ly/freebadges+) as the URL. This comes in handy because after using your account for a while, it will be harder to find the link you’re searching for in your bit.ly history. So I like to keep track of my important bit.ly’s in an excel spreadsheet (yes, we’ve already established that I’m a dork).

The large number represents how many clicks were generated from your account. As you can see, 15 clicks were generated from my account. 136 clicks were generated in total, so 121 clicks were generated from other people going to bit.ly and shortening my blog’s URL themselves.

2. Customize your bit.ly’s

When you shorten a link on any link shortening site, it generates a link with random characters. When I initially shortened my Free Twitter Badges link with bit.ly, it gave me the link http://bit.ly/8CKeP. Unless you’re a pretty strange person, 8CKeP probably doesn’t mean anything to you. So I want my bit.ly to read http://bit.ly/freebadges. Simply enter your desired bit.ly URL, such as “freebadges” into the “Custom Name” field on the right:

And viola, my link is now http://bit.ly/freebadges. Try to keep your links as short as possible for sites like Twitter.

3. See tweets in real-time

Bit.ly lets you see people’s tweets that contain your bit.ly’s. This allows for conversation monitoring about the content you’re pushing into the Twittersphere.

I’m pretty excited that people think my holiday-themed Twitter backgrounds are “super cute.”

4. See your personal click stats

The Bit.ly click summary feature lets you see how people are interacting with bit.ly’s you’ve created for the past hour, seven days, or 30 days.

You can also see referrer details (most people click my bit.ly’s through Email, IM, and AIR Apps such as Tweetdeck, followed by Twitter, then Facebook), and location details.

5. The bit.ly sidebar

The Bit.ly Sidebar slides out to shorten your long link, then shows Traffic, Conversations, and History. You can also share your bit.ly link on Twitter, Gmail, Email, and Facebook. Add a link to your Favorites bar to quickly activate the bit.ly sidebar on any webpage you visit.

6. Makes sure your content is optimized for search

Your bit.ly’s info page will let you know how the search engines see your page, so you can double check that your post is SEO compliant in terms of your metadata, including keywords and description.

7. Other dorky cool stuff

Numbers 1 and 2 on this list are the main reasons why bit.ly is so awesome, but here’s a quick list of other notable features:

• Convert bit.ly’s you created when signed out to your account’s bit.ly history
• Bit.ly browser extentions (Firefox and Chrome) let you preview any bit.ly before you click
• The mobile bit.ly site is m.bit.ly, for easy URL shortening on your phone
• The bit.ly Gmail gadget lets you create bit.ly’s while writing email
• Amazon Affiliates bookmarklet lets you easily create bit.ly’s with your own affiliate link

With all these cool features, it doesn’t make sense to use any URL shortener besides Bit.ly.

Which URL shortener do you use most regularly? Or prove me wrong; do you think any other shortener has superior features?

Here are some free Twitter backgrounds with a holiday theme! Feel free to use, share, and distribute these backgrounds. The first three designs are customizable (PSD downloads), so you can add your own photo, links, and contact information. If you don’t already have Photoshop, you can open the files in Gimp, a free photo editing software. 

If you don’t want to customize your background, no problem; variations of these designs are available that you can simply upload to Twitter as is. 

Want updates when new backgrounds are available? Follow me @dianafreedman. 

Customizable Twitter Backgrounds

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Ready-To-Go Twitter Backgrounds

Preview |  Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Preview | Download 

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments. 

Follow me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook for updates on more free designs.

Twitter has recently launched a new retweet functionality intended to solve tweet attribution confusion, the repetitive nature of retweets, and messy editing of the original tweet. Since the functionality is still in BETA, not everyone has access to this feature yet. But Twitter is gradually rolling out the feature, so you should see this soon.

How the New Retweets Work

You can now retweet with a single click; just click “retweet” below someone else’s tweet:

Twitter then makes sure that you actually want to retweet this tweet:

After clicking “yes,” you will appear below the tweet you’ve retweeted, along with whoever else has retweeted this tweet. There’s also the option to undo the retweet:

The original tweet will then appear in your own Twitter stream, attributed to the person you retweeted:

When the people you follow retweet others using this new functionality, the users they retweet will start appearing in your Twitter stream. So instead of seeing the person you follow tweeting “RT @JohnSmith blah blah blah ,” you’ll see John Smith in your twitter stream with his original tweet. Under the tweet, you’ll be able to see which person you follow has retweeted his tweet:

There’s also a new item in the right-navigation, where you can see all retweets. You can now see retweets by everyone, retweets by you, and your tweets that have been retweeted.

The Pros of the New Retweets

There are several benefits of this new retweet functionality:

• Cleaner retweets – When retweeted by person A and then re-retweeted by person B, it’s no longer confusing who wrote the original tweet
• The retweet page – It’s nice to be able to see retweets alone, including which of your tweets have been retweeted, and to refer back to your old retweets
• Less confusion for newbies – Many people have been turned off by the twitter lingo: “What on earth is a RT @???”
• Others can’t edit you – Ever crafted the perfect tweet, only to have it torn apart when someone else “retweets” you? Now your original tweet will survive.

The Cons of the New Retweets

However, there are also reasons you might not want to use this new feature:

• Links may be cut off – Only users logged into the Twitter website can see the new retweet format. If the tweet would have exceeded 140 characters including the RT @username, this will cut off the end of the tweet for users without BETA, users with a desktop platform like Tweetdeck, and logged out Twitter users.Since URLs are usually at the end of a tweet, this will make the URL non-functional.
• Lack of commentary – Even if you don’t want to modify the original tweet, now the ability to comment before the RT @whoever is gone
• You can’t edit tweets – Even the most awesome tweets can have typos, and now you won’t be able to fix them before retweeting.
• Less visibility in others’ Twitter streams – Retweeting others doesn’t seem to have the same appeal now that your name and icon don’t appear as prominently
• Others can’t retweet your tweet – If one of your followers wants to retweet your retweet, now there’s no way you can get credit for finding the tweet first; your follower will be directly retweeting the original tweet.

If the cons outweigh the pros for you, you don’t have to use this new functionality at all; you can continue using retweets the way you used to (RT @). However, you won’t be able to turn off the feature where you see people you do not follow in your twitter stream.

What do you think of the new retweet feature? Will you use it, or will you stick with the old method of “RT @”? Let me know in the comments!

I originally wrote this post for my company Overdrive Interactive’s blog. Overdrive Interactive is a full-service online marketing agency based in Boston that specializes in online media, social media, and search engine marketing campaigns and services.

Follow me on Twitter, or become a fan of this blog on Facebook.