This is precisely why I hate RT but love the new official retweet format

Below is one of my tweets being RT‘d by an old friend of mine, @cbhutton:

Now she’s a great gal, but she altered the message of my original tweet by basically cutting it in half and removing the link to the original piece of content that lets people see what I’m talking about:

This is why I vastly prefer the official new RT format that Twitter has adopted on the site and in its API for developers. It preserves the original message content, meaning, and context while ensuring the original user gets credit, no matter how many people RT it, all while not forcing you over your character count.

Yes, the ability to add your own commentary is lost in the new RT format, and besides all the “LOL!” and “ZOMG” commentary that really doesn’t add anything to the experience, I agree that this is a bummer (however: in this particular case, @cbhutton’s commentary was hardly worthless; it was a great way for her to show her, well, skepticism of my tweet while sharing it with her followers). But considering the brevity of Twitter’s format and the fundamental purpose of retweeting something—to share someone else’s original piece of content with your followers—commentary is trumped by the need to preserve the original message and context.