How useful it is to have a button that refers one’s content forward hundreds and thousands of times, and the original content poster is completely unaware of the fact that this even happens? Beats me.
Justice for retweets!
Imagine the following: you posted a tweet. Someone, let’s call them XY, retweets. That’s one (and you can see this happening). Then someone ZQ retweets. That’s two. After some time, you log in to your account only to learn that you have no idea how many more people – if any – retweeted your content.
To bypass retweets being overwhelmed, the network will not show you retweets. Not ever again. It would figure out that you took it in and feel not interested to follow up on whatever happens next.
What you need to do is to go back and back and back through the timeline, and find the retweet. But wouldn’t this be just a waste of time? And, honestly, would you do it for every piece of content that you publish?
The same will happen if, let’s say, all of the people that you know on Twitter retweet one piece of information. Twitter provided the information in an early stage, you saw the original retweet, but you remain in dark on possible major scuffle.
Again, you may go back to see what happened with the original tweet and follow its path to the crowd that retweeted. Again, would you waste any more time doing this?
What happens with public movements, campaigns, fights?
This might mean that a good virtual revolution will pass punished. Noone might be even aware of the fact that something is going on in this world. The when-you-see-one-retweet-you’ve-seen-them-all policy of Twitter might cost us a great deal more.
I do realize that sometimes it feels a bit frustrating to see the same content at different people. But doesn’t it feel more frustrating to be completely left in a dark, and excluded from an important event?
Following right voices
It doesn’t matter if a certain number of people retweet. I am not on social media to follow the crowd or go after one leader. I want to see the names of all people who are retweeting. It involves all my future thinking over that piece of information.
WANTED: Retweets by others
I can’t see this option under the ‘Retweets’ hand side. I’m missing it. I feel a bit lost without it. And I want it back!
To conclude the talk…
I realize that that it is not impossible to reach information. You can search and find out all the things that you want. But I am missing out on those options when I can learn things with one click and minimum effort. For me, that was all that Twitter is about: reaching out, saving valuable time, being loud, loud as hell!
More than ever now is the time that shows that social media is bringing change to our views on certain topics. We already embraced social media networks. Not a day passes by that we don’t scroll over their contents to learn what’s new and can we be a part of it. If we don’t see the change, how can we embrace it and be it?
