I read this TechRepublic article and thought I would retweet it.
Here is what I usually do in such situations:
- Search for the news website's official Twitter account.
- In this official account, look for the tweet that announces said article.
- Retweet that tweet.
Quite a lengthy procedure…
Today I noticed the "Twitter" button on the news website, and clicked it, thinking it was an easy way to perform a retweet.
But it did something else:
<text of the original tweet> <short URL> via @<thenewswebsite>
I am a bit surprised they would push for such tweets, instead of retweets.
What is the advantage of using this format, rather than a normal retweet?
Best Answer
TechRepublic is using Twitter's Tweet Button functionality on their site. If you take a look at the settings that can be configured, it seems like TechRepublic is just using the default ones for the button. These defaults can indeed make the format quite long.
TechRepublic is most probably using this functionality because it's the default way of sharing web content to Twitter. Retweeting is only possible if the content is actually already featured in a tweet somewhere, so using the Tweet Button removes this requirement.