I know I have a few people that check out Coram Deo from time to time that happen to also be Twitter users. I thank you very much for following me on Twitter as well as checking out the site! I want to share an opinion regarding Twitter etiquette that I have picked up from one of those followers, @james_shields (be sure to check his page out and/or follow him, good sense of sarcasm and a true tech guy!).
A few months back, @james_shields posted a question about the proper etiquette of Retweeting on Twitter. He posed the question, how do you properly credit the posters of a RT so that you can still display the main points of the RT without going over the 140 character limit?
Through some discussion and common sense @james_shields landed on the idea of using the tilde ( ~ ) to represent omitted Twitter users. The tilde would be placed between the initial poster of the Tweet and the person you are directly Retweeting. Therefore, for example:
RT @oracle_ace: ~ RT @cpurdy: Retweet this if you disagree w Twitter’s decision to hide replies to ppl you don’t follow. #fixreplies
If you notice, the tilde is between the initial poster, @cpurdy, and the person that I directly re-tweeted, @oracle_ace. @oracle_ace actually re-tweeted somebody else, but for the sake of space in the 140 character limit, I was not able to credit this person.
Therefore, for situations like this, I am in agreement with @james_shields that by placing the tilde in the above mentioned location, we credit the most important person being the initial poster, as well as the person we directly got the tweet from. Unfortunately we cannot credit everybody due to the 140 character limit, but this method ultimately does produce a “tweet-trail” if you would like to follow the path of who re-tweeted messages prior to you, leading you all the way back to the initial poster.
So, I’m sure I can also speak for @james_shields, we hope you fellow Twitter users out there remain classy and give credit where credit’s due, and use that tilde ( ~ ) when you’re re-tweeting a popular tweet!
Thoughts, comments, suggestions? Be sure to leave a comment on this blog or feel free to send me, @wjfuoco, or @james_shields a message on Twitter!
Thank you for the kind words, Mr. Fuoco! I think you hit the nail on the head here. The tilde convention ensures that the original author gets credit, while at the same time exposing your followers to an undoubted interesting person. As you said, it leaves a tweet trail since you can follow the most recent tweeter all the way back to the original message.
I share your hope that this becomes common etiquette!
No problem fine sir! We need to figure out how the word can be passed along about adopting this form of Twitter etiquette and/or people using this and enhancing this technique!