Twitter announced Tuesday the launch of its revamped retweet feature that now makes it easier for users to share other people's tweets and add their own comments without worrying about not having enough character space.
The retweet is the most commonly used tool in the social media site and is a great way to share other's interesting tweets that you have read. Currently, users can retweet by copying the content of the tweet they wish to share, opening a new Tweet box and pasting the message, then adding the letters RT with the username of the author.
With the new "retweet with comment" feature, users don't need to copy and paste the tweet anymore. One simply needs to click the "retweet" option if he or she wants to share the message. After clicking "retweet," a tweet box will appear and allow the user to type a comment with a maximum of 116 characters on top of the 140-character limit.
This new option appears to be very similar to how Facebook's "Share" option works.
The new feature is now available on Twitter's website and iPhone app. A version for Android devices is expected to be released soon, according to TechCrunch.
"Retweet with comment" is meant to address the key complaint of the users when retweeting a message, which is that they don't have enough character space yet to add their comments prior to the change. The company hopes that this change will not only boost user engagement. but their advertising revenue as well, CNET reported.
The Pew Research Center released a report early this year showing that Twitter's user base is increasing in terms of percentage per year, yet it remains to be the social media platform with the least number of adult users. Twitter is still behind Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram as of September 2014. As of March 2015, Twitter has over 288 million active monthly users, ranking 12th among social networks worldwide.
