Today it is completely normalized that, when it coincides with something with a Twitter user, the retweet function is used. However, there was a time when this option did not exist and, in order not to incite plagiarism, users did a manual “retweet”. In recent days, it was discovered which could have been the first in the entire history of the platform, dating from April 18, 2007.
ReTweet: jmalthus @spin Yes! Web2.0 is about social media, and guess what people like to be social about? Themselves. Social Narcissism— Eric Rice (@ericrice)
April 18, 2007
The tweet was broadcast by Eric Rice who, thirteen years later, remains active on that social network. In the tweet in question, Rice adheres to what a user, Jesse Malthus (@jmalthus), had been posting. In Malthus’s profile, you can read, in his biography, the phrase “Twitter is social narcissism. I tweet, ergo, I’m a social narcissist.” Apparently, Rice adhered but did not want to copy him, he wrote: “ReTweet: jmalthus…”. Clever, isn’t it? This anecdote was discovered by Miyera González, who commented that the function of “RT” as we know it, was added in 2009.
I don’t know if they know, because they are very young, but the retuit button did not exist in the first place; Twitter had to put it in 2009 because people invented the RT manual in 2007, which consisted of copying and pasting a tweet with “RT”. I find it crazy that the users have invented this function.—Mireya González (@ciervovulnerado)
June 14, 2020
This brought great memories to old Twitter users, who remembered old habits of such social network, such as the “TwOn or “TwOff” or the “#FF” by the FollowFriday.What do you remember about Twitter a few years ago?
