RT @wparker: Geno on UCLA’s 88-game winning streak: “People keep wanting to ask me about next season. You are out of your mind.” #ncaaw #wff
7 thoughts on “Twitter: RT @wparker: Geno …”
David K.
Have I mentioned how annoying I find twitters appropriation of the “@” symbol to mean something completely different from its understood meaning?
Twitter uses it to indicate a sense of FROM not a sense of TO/AT. So wrong.
Brendan Loy
Actually that’s not really right, David. If you send a tweet “@brendanloy,” you are indeed sending a tweet TO/AT me. That’s how it got started. So for instance, if I START a tweet with “@midmajority,” I am talking TO Kyle Whelliston. You don’t see those tweets here, because the plugin that imports my tweets automatically excludes any tweets that start with the @ symbol, because it knows those tweets are directed TO someone, and thus are most likely part of a (public) conversation rather than standalone tweets.
However, what has happened is, “@brendanloy” has come to simply mean “Brendan Loy’s Twitter account” — neither TO nor FROM me, but just essentially my “name” on Twitter. This is because, if you type @brendanloy into Twitter, in *whatever* context, Twitter will automatically turn that word, “@brendanloy,” into a link to my Twitter timeline.
Where the confusion comes in, and where you get the (incorrect) sense that @ means “FROM” on Twitter, is when somebody’s username is used in the context of a “retweet.” But the @ in “RT @brendanloy” doesn’t mean “from.” The “from” is implied by the “RT.” The @ in “RT @brendanloy” doesn’t really mean anything independently of the username that follows — it simply identifies @brendanloy as a Twitter account, creates a link to my timeline, and causes me to see that you’ve retweeted something I wrote.
David K.
So let me see if i understand this, referencing the above tweet. This was not a tweet made by “wparker”? Who was it made by? You? I thought RT was “re-tweet” ala a FWD: or a RE: in e-mail/memos etc. Was it a repost of something you said? In that case how is it a “re”-tweet. Isn’t it just a tweet?
Brendan Loy
No, it was indeed a tweet by wparker, or rather, by @wparker. My point is simply that the @ doesn’t mean “TO” or “FROM,” it’s simply part of her name. The “FROM” is implied by the “RT,” not by the “@.”
Consider the following possible ways “@wparker” can be used. There’s this instance, where I’m “re-tweeting” something she said:
RT @wparker: Geno on UCLA’s 88-game winning streak: “People keep wanting to ask me about next season. You are out of your mind.” #ncaaw #wff
Alternatively, I could have responded to her, like so:
@wparker Haha, that’s a funny quote. Geno rocks.
Or I could have simultaneously responded and re-tweeted, thus repeating/quoting what she said — or at least part of what she said, since I’m limited to 140 characters — while also commenting on what she said. There are two standard ways this is done, in Twitter-speak:
Haha, funny stuff. RT @wparker: Geno on UCLA streak: “People keep wanting to ask me about next season. You are out of your mind.” #ncaaw #wff
Or:
RT @wparker: Geno on UCLA streak: “People keep wanting to ask me about next season. You are out of your mind.” #ncaaw #wff | Haha, funny stuff.
In that case, my tweet is both “TO” and “FROM” @wparker, in the sense that I’m both quoting her and saying something to/about her, which she will see in her Twitter “mentions” list.
Alternatively, I could reference @wparker in the middle of a tweet, like so:
You should all be reading the women’s basketball tweets by @wparker. Good stuff.
You see the latter all the time in my tweets about Kyle Whelliston, a.k.a. @midmajority. I will reference Kyle in the middle of a tweet by saying something like “Wow, @midmajority must be really happy right now.” That doesn’t mean “Wow, from-Kyle must be really happy right now.” Nor does it mean “Wow, at-Kyle must be really happy righht now.” It simply means, “Wow, Kyle must be really happy right now.” @midmajority — not midmajority, but @midmajority — is Kyle’s name on Twitter.
A tweet like “Wow, @midmajority must be really happy right now” is neither “TO” Kyle nor “FROM” him (although it’s “TO” him in the sense that, like all @references, he’ll see it in his “mentions” area — this applies to re-tweets too, BTW). It’s simply “ABOUT” him.
Anyway, do you see the common denominator among all of these types of tweets? In no case does the @ symbol really mean “TO” or “FROM.” It is simply a part of the referenced user’s “name” on Twitter. A re-tweet, like the one I posted here, is indeed talking about something “FROM” @wparker, but the @ symbol isn’t what signifies the “FROM.” The “RT” automatically implies the “FROM.” The @ is just a part of her name.
The @ is neutral as to whether the tweet in question is “TO” or “FROM” the referenced person. That’s not how it started — the original usage was the one in my second blockquote above, and that usage still means “TO @wparker” — but then the @ symbol simply came to be seen as part of the person’s Twitter “name,” because of the way Twitter’s software treats @references (conveniently making them a link to the person in question, and putting the referencing tweet in the person’s “mentions” list).
David K.
So the @ symbol IS being misused, just not in the way I initially thought. Atleast I understand now…and still hate twitter.
RT @wparker: Geno on UCLA’s 88-game winning streak: “People keep wanting to ask me about next season. You are out of your mind.” #ncaaw #wff
Have I mentioned how annoying I find twitters appropriation of the “@” symbol to mean something completely different from its understood meaning?
Twitter uses it to indicate a sense of FROM not a sense of TO/AT. So wrong.
Actually that’s not really right, David. If you send a tweet “@brendanloy,” you are indeed sending a tweet TO/AT me. That’s how it got started. So for instance, if I START a tweet with “@midmajority,” I am talking TO Kyle Whelliston. You don’t see those tweets here, because the plugin that imports my tweets automatically excludes any tweets that start with the @ symbol, because it knows those tweets are directed TO someone, and thus are most likely part of a (public) conversation rather than standalone tweets.
However, what has happened is, “@brendanloy” has come to simply mean “Brendan Loy’s Twitter account” — neither TO nor FROM me, but just essentially my “name” on Twitter. This is because, if you type @brendanloy into Twitter, in *whatever* context, Twitter will automatically turn that word, “@brendanloy,” into a link to my Twitter timeline.
Where the confusion comes in, and where you get the (incorrect) sense that @ means “FROM” on Twitter, is when somebody’s username is used in the context of a “retweet.” But the @ in “RT @brendanloy” doesn’t mean “from.” The “from” is implied by the “RT.” The @ in “RT @brendanloy” doesn’t really mean anything independently of the username that follows — it simply identifies @brendanloy as a Twitter account, creates a link to my timeline, and causes me to see that you’ve retweeted something I wrote.
So let me see if i understand this, referencing the above tweet. This was not a tweet made by “wparker”? Who was it made by? You? I thought RT was “re-tweet” ala a FWD: or a RE: in e-mail/memos etc. Was it a repost of something you said? In that case how is it a “re”-tweet. Isn’t it just a tweet?
No, it was indeed a tweet by wparker, or rather, by @wparker. My point is simply that the @ doesn’t mean “TO” or “FROM,” it’s simply part of her name. The “FROM” is implied by the “RT,” not by the “@.”
Consider the following possible ways “@wparker” can be used. There’s this instance, where I’m “re-tweeting” something she said:
Alternatively, I could have responded to her, like so:
Or I could have simultaneously responded and re-tweeted, thus repeating/quoting what she said — or at least part of what she said, since I’m limited to 140 characters — while also commenting on what she said. There are two standard ways this is done, in Twitter-speak:
Or:
In that case, my tweet is both “TO” and “FROM” @wparker, in the sense that I’m both quoting her and saying something to/about her, which she will see in her Twitter “mentions” list.
Alternatively, I could reference @wparker in the middle of a tweet, like so:
You see the latter all the time in my tweets about Kyle Whelliston, a.k.a. @midmajority. I will reference Kyle in the middle of a tweet by saying something like “Wow, @midmajority must be really happy right now.” That doesn’t mean “Wow, from-Kyle must be really happy right now.” Nor does it mean “Wow, at-Kyle must be really happy righht now.” It simply means, “Wow, Kyle must be really happy right now.” @midmajority — not midmajority, but @midmajority — is Kyle’s name on Twitter.
A tweet like “Wow, @midmajority must be really happy right now” is neither “TO” Kyle nor “FROM” him (although it’s “TO” him in the sense that, like all @references, he’ll see it in his “mentions” area — this applies to re-tweets too, BTW). It’s simply “ABOUT” him.
Anyway, do you see the common denominator among all of these types of tweets? In no case does the @ symbol really mean “TO” or “FROM.” It is simply a part of the referenced user’s “name” on Twitter. A re-tweet, like the one I posted here, is indeed talking about something “FROM” @wparker, but the @ symbol isn’t what signifies the “FROM.” The “RT” automatically implies the “FROM.” The @ is just a part of her name.
The @ is neutral as to whether the tweet in question is “TO” or “FROM” the referenced person. That’s not how it started — the original usage was the one in my second blockquote above, and that usage still means “TO @wparker” — but then the @ symbol simply came to be seen as part of the person’s Twitter “name,” because of the way Twitter’s software treats @references (conveniently making them a link to the person in question, and putting the referencing tweet in the person’s “mentions” list).
So the @ symbol IS being misused, just not in the way I initially thought. Atleast I understand now…and still hate twitter.
David, I feel your pain. Twitter is lame. I can’t wait for Flutter to make Twitter obsolete!
Flutter is the future!