In Defense of the New Retweet Feature

Another something has changed on the Internet, so wouldn't you know it, everyone is upset. But the latest major Death of the Internet--the retweet reconfiguration--is a positive change. It is a positive change for more than one reason:

• It preserves the author's intent by preserving their tweet exactly as they wrote it. How many times have you had to truncate someone else's tweet to accommodate for their user name? The original tweeter picked their words carefully, and although it has become an accepted practice to remove select words to make room for retweeting superfluence, that's actually terrible citation practice. As a writer, I love the preservation of intent.
  
• It draws attention to new personalities. More times than I can count I've scanned a tweet and replied to the person who posted it, only then to realize they were retweeting someone else. Putting someone else's user picture, username, and full tweet in my stream forces me to pause and consider it, which is the (presumed) intent of the retweeter.
  
• It does not violate your personal space, so shut up. I've heard that some people find this new feature intrusive or otherwise violating of their personal Twitter space. This is total bullshit. Retweeting has been around since Twitter has been around and it was not considered a violation. Retweets have always been content in your stream put there by people you choose to follow. This has not changed in any way: the content is tagged as "retweeted by so-and-so." Honestly. It's the same thing.
  
• You add nothing of value to a retweet. Another major complaint about this change is that retweets are no longer able to be annotated. But here's the thing: do you really add value when you add "love this" "check this out" or "smart" to a retweet? You do not need to add an extra text to endorse a retweet. You are retweeting it; that is an endorsement. And if you really need to add your own commentary within the tweet (have we forgotten there are venues for commentary outside of Twitter? Maybe you could blog it!), they did not somehow deactivate the old way of doing it. People will still know what you mean if you type "is this you in this video lol RT @username blah blah blah."