Screenshot of Seesmic Twitter client

There's a movement going on to encourage Twitter to add retweet functionality. It's already garnered thousands of votes. Here's the basic statement from the 'official' site, retweet.com.

Retweeting has become an essential part of the Twitter experience. Our goal is to start an online revolution. Help us show Twitter.com that thousands of us would like this feature. Make your voice count by signing the public petition!

Is built in retweeting really a revolution? Many Twitter clients already include retweeting. Sure, there's no API call for it provided by Twitter, but it's a very simple text formatting step. If you can code a Twitter client, coding retweets is the easy part.

I'll contend though that retweets is not only not a needed base function in Twitter, but it's already an overused tool. Here's a perfect example of why.

well, duh! RT @kmallan RT @buymyshirt: Express your support for Medical #Marijuana #420 #cannabis http://bit.ly/1nWwM (Please RT)

WTH? Who originally tweeted this? Do I even care who originally shared it? Will anyone? Isn't it all about the content, not the sharer?

Here's another example:

RT: @00k: RT @unifex @rasmus I love Windows users - http://bugs.php.net/48139

This time not only is it a double retweet, the original receiver is included as well. I'm confident that information isn't even relevant to any of us receiving this tweet. That's especially likely after two retweets.

My counter proposition is the use of freetweeting. Freetweeting would be the uncredited re-tweeting of something you find on Twitter. Often times when I share a link, I'm not as interested in getting credit for sharing as I am that the link gets shared. Likewise with a quote. It's not about me, it's about the content. It might even specifically be about the person who created the content.

In order to implement this no special software or tools are required, simply copy and paste the tweet back into the post window. To further make this obvious to use freetweeting vs retweeting, the original poster could tag the post FT. This would indicate folks should just copy and go. That person could optionally include the FT or not.

Twitter culture would obviously break down into two groups, those that FT tag and those that won't. My hope would be that in either case they just don't use RT @tojosan for something I've shared as FT.

What do you think? Would you support this movement? Would you be willing to lose credit in exchange for clearer content? Easier to read tweets?

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