Question About Retweets

Hi Jim, I am hoping for some answers too. I don't have a clue how it works...if I like a tweet I might favorite it or retweet and some favorite or retweet mine... beyond that I am lost. Sometimes it say whoever retweeted a tweet you were mentioned in...that drives me nuts...what tweet? Where is it? It all seems so random...see some interesting stuff that's about it.

The plain text ones aren't highlighting because they're not Twitter handles. Instagram uses @ names as well, and the ones that aren't highlighted on Twitter are actually Instagram users. :)

Just FYI, favoriting a tweet only bookmarks it for you, and notifies the person who posted it. It doesn't do anything to promote the tweet. Only retweeting does that.

Not quite, David. When you favorite a tweet, it could show up in the Discover feed of someone who follows, and I have also heard tell that it's possible someone would see your favorite in their regular Twitter feed if they hit refresh and there's no new content. The second bit doesn't happen all that often, but Twitter apparently says it's possible. (Sort of like how it occasionally lets you know someone you follow follows someone else.)

I can be wrong but consider this:
a) it is not you but host benefits from your post. Host intention is not to promote you but collect info about you and sell your link.
b) the rules are changed frequently... You must dedicate yourself to the game.(doesn't matter if it is Twitter,Google,Facebook.) or
focus on developing own style and production your Art.
c) check how long host operates in art world. Not so long?

I've been reading that Twitter intends to make some big changes. User growth is slowing, and it's because people find Twitter too confusing. I'm a (former) software engineer, and I'm finding Twitter hard to follow. What's missing is just a clear straightforward list of the rules for how it works - I guess that just wouldn't be cool Lacking that, it's a guessing game and I have to annoy people with my dumb questions. Viktor, you're right that in this case the benefit is to lumen8mpls - but that doesn't encourage people like me to give them any more photos or 'mentions'.

Christi, I get the part about some of the attributions being Instagram handles, and that explains part of what's happening at lumen8mpls. But in my case, they picked up my actual account name (Jim Hughes) and not my Twitter handle (@jimhughes51), whereas in other case they got the actual handle. And my tweet has a retweet count of 0.


I guess they're not really retweeting. They're looking at posts on Twitter and Instagram, and just copying the content into tweets of their own. So I'm not getting any useful attribution from them.

While they may not be retweeting, at the very least, they gave proper attribution. Too often, we don't even get that.

If you want to gain a little Twitter mojo from their lackluster tweet, retweet it. People who look for their tweets will see it, your followers will see it, and they'll be notified about it (and perhaps take the hint). Can't hurt.

You have to think of it as a micro-blog, because that's what it is. Philosophers tweeting their shopping lists, historians tweeting the weekend weather... Why? So they can remind themselves of it, or something else, later.

You're allowed to read it because it's public, but it doesn't mean it has to be useful to you. (Unless you've forgotten to buy milk or bread, or had wanted to go fishing). They're not demanding you read their every tweeted thought, but they're not actively stopping you from it. It's just there to add a bit of colour on your phone, laptop, or ipad.

So you've started following someone because they're consistently tweeting about things that interest you. You find a few of their tweets more interesting than most on your 'feed' (list of tweets that pour in from who you follow. They find that you've retweeted them and may think ah similar interests and choose to follow you.

This is good, now you can tweet privately about your shared interests.

And then you wake up - you've just spent an hour reading, tweeting, re-tweeting, favoriting, and you've completely forgotten to go and get the milk and bread...

Christi, I see you've been at this a while :-) So I re-tweet the 'fake' re-tweet, and they pick it up again... hey this reminds me of Spy Vs. Spy in Mad Magazine. But really, this lumen8mpls thing should be giving us useful attributions if they want more good photos. I think I'll message them on that.

Mark, I did look up a few people I'm seriously interested in - some scientific and philosophical types - and found that the more interesting they were to me, the less they tweeted - a couple of people I'd really like to hear from have tweeted maybe twice in the last 3 years and then given up...

I don't think you'd need to remove that tag, Jim, unless it put the RT over 140 characters. Just RT it as is. They've got a person behind their tweets who should be smart enough not to put it out again, and if they're not that smart, well, you soak up even more Twitter mojo. You win either way. LOL