Twitter has announced that it will reinstate its former retweet functionality, just two months after changing the way retweets work and encouraging users to adopt Quote Retweets.
The company made it harder for users to “retweet” a piece of content on the platform, and instead encouraged users to Quote Tweet a message instead, adding their own voice to the picture.
Instead of hitting the retweet button to automatically retweet a post, users had to type in a comment or add to an argument in order for the tweet to appear on their timeline.
Now, the company has backtracked on the change, admitting that it didn’t work.
Speaking of the news on Twitter, a spokesperson for the company said: “Our goal with prompting QTs (instead of Retweets) was to encourage more thoughtful amplification.
We don’t believe that this happened, in practice. The use of Quote Tweets increased, but 45% of them included single-word affirmations and 70% had less than 25 characters.
“The increase in Quote Tweets was also offset by an overall 20% decrease in sharing through both Retweets and Quote Tweets. Considering this, we’ll no longer prompt Quote Tweets from the Retweet icon.”
“We’ll continue to focus on encouraging more thoughtful amplification. We believe this requires multiple solutions––some of which may be more effective than others. For example, we know that prompting you to read articles leads to more informed sharing.”
Are you pleased to see that the old retweet button has returned? Did you prefer seeing more quoted retweets? Let us know and check back soon for more social media news and info.
