You Can Now Retweet Yourself on Twitter

Android Police

If you have something important you need to say on Twitter to grab people's attention, but time passes to the point you're no longer on people's timelines, you can now retweet yourself so your followers will see the message again. Some people are saying this will just encourage Twitter users to become more narcissistic, but that's unfair as there are many other uses.

This update comes after Twitter made it so usernames are not included in the character count. This essentially meant that you could mention as many people as you like in one tweet, but people haven't focused on that even though it means @ mentions don't work the same as they used to. It's because of this that users can now retweet themselves because usernames don't react to the system in the same way. They no longer only pop up on the user and the person they mentioned's timelines and instead they will appear on everyone's timeline. If you want to tweet just one person, but you don't want to send a DM, then you now have to reply to one of their tweets. It's also because of this that if you retweet yourself it's counted. The @ mentions are no longer special and though it's kind of sad, at least they do still link to the user and let them know that you've mentioned them in this tweet.

What is especially sad though is that some people are claiming that this update is the height of what is wrong with Twitter. They think Twitter is too self-absorbed and in some instances that might be true, but that isn't the only reason someone might retweet themselves. It could be a great way for a business to remind their followers that they have an event coming up, if something negative is happening you might have a tweet that could help someone feel better that you might want to retweet or you might just be sick of saying the same thing over and over so you just retweet it. People will have other reasons rather than just thinking they're great so they're going to share this for the millionth time. Yes, it will likely be used for self-promotion, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Sometimes you have to if you're networking or are just trying to get a message across.

These days it seems like people are always looking for a reason to put Twitter down, but this time, there's nothing to make fun of. They made a solid move and they really need to make more of those.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird writer with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is glad to be playing around with apps and writing about them in the mean time! Follow her @Songbird_Rosina

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