RT One reason why auto retweet is a fail

If you’re an avid tweeter, you’ve probably been invited to beta test Twitter’s new auto retweet function, which allows you to retweet anything to your followers just with the touch of a button. I like the initiative, but there’s no way it will work. Here’s why:

It doesn’t allow you to be… you.

Retweeting is great. It allows you to pass on a tweet to your followers that you find interesting, or that reflects positively on you. But the real benefit of a retweet, in my opinion, is that it allows you to add your thoughts to it, thereby giving you the ability to customize the tweet for your followers. You know, inject a little personality into it. The new auto retweet strips that from you. It automatically retweets without giving you that ability to change a thing. Where’s the fun in that?

I get that this new feature will allow some users to get their tweet total up very quickly, so there’s some appeal there (for narcissists), but the reason I follow people on Twitter is that they not only pass on good information, they also have an opinion on it. If they do nothing but blindly retweet information, then I’ll just follow the original source – because obviously they have nothing to say.

So here’s one person that’s going to continue to RT the old way. Because I’ve been accused of many things in my life, but not having an opinion has never been one of them.