More to Retweeting Than Meets the Eye for Businesses?

Retweeting is a phenomenon that has taken the Twitter world by storm. The concept began when somebody added the letters "RT" to somebody else's tweet and posted it as their own. The idea caught on on a massive scale, and now there are services that utilize retweeting as the backdrop of their entire purposes. "Some of Twitter's best features are emergent—people inventing simple but creative ways to share, discover, and communicate. One such convention is retweeting," Share with Murdok readers. Disclaimer: If you are not a Twitterer, you may be unfamiliar with the concept of retweeting. Basically, when someone updates their status on Twitter, that is called a tweet. When someone likes that status and wants to share it with others, they will at "RT" (for ReTweet) and the user's name typically and post the same update. This is usually done with Tweets containing links, so naturally it provides a good, viral means of link exposure.

discussed this concept in a recent interview with Murdok:

But back to why retweeting is useful to businesses. The attention grabbing effect of the retweet button on a piece of content is just one aspect. Another is of course, the promotion the content provider sees from a substantial amount of retweets. They're viral by nature, and in the best-case scenario, they can drive a ton of traffic to the content.

Famed blogger Robert Scoble started
Pros

- Retweets are viral

- Retweets show up as top-level items in FriendFeed

- As opposed to a Facebook "like," a retweet is shared with everyone

- Retweets typically give credit to sources

- While giving credit to sources, retweets can lead to relationships

- Susbstantial amounts of retweets can say a lot about the quality of content

- Retweets can inspire further conversation

- Retweets can be good for branding

- Retweets can easily be shared across multiple networks, like Twitter, Friend, Facebook, etc.

- Retweets can provide followers with additional value in quality content

Cons
- It's hard to provide a list of the things you've retweeted, as Scoble mentions. He mentions how people can see your "likes" on FriendFeed

- Retweeting creates what many people consider to be "noise" on Twitter

- Twitter's 140 character limit

- Some people consider retweeting to be like copying other people's work for your own gain, though this concept is heavily disputed

Conclusion

A recent
Scoble's whole "Retweet vs. Like" concept is an interesting one in itself. We have certainly seen Facebook make numerous changes to its interface that seem to move the network closer to the realm of Twitter. You have to wonder if Facebook will eventually incorporate some kind of retweet-like functionality itself.

What are your thoughts on retweeting? Do you see value in it or is it just noise?