Arguing for the Retweet

Lately I have seen a number of admonishments toward the retweet, discouraging the practice and encouraging everyone to create original thoughts, ideas, and resources to tweet.  This is contradictory in my opinion to how Twitter actually works.

I am not one of the "cool kids" in education, or ed tech for that matter.  I don't have thousands of followers or readers.  I don't keynote at conferences or write for the Huffington Post every few weeks.  Very few people in the education community have heard me speak or read my few published pieces.

Let's say I post an excellent, but not well known resource or a really profound statement.  Who will read it?  How do I share it?  I post it to twitter, so what.  If by chance however it is retweeted by someone with a greater following the audience for that comment increases dramatically.  The response increases as well.  Possibly my audience increases as many who may not have followed me in the past decide now that they should.

This is how I follow new people on Twitter most of the time.  I do not read every Twiiter post that hits my feed.  I am pretty selective.  When someone whose ideas and thoughts I respect posts something, I usually read it.  When they retweet someone else's idea, link, blog post, etc. I often find a new resource for good information.  If I find the information of value I add people to the list of those I follow.

So please, if you see something posted that you truly feel adds to the conversation, retweet it.  There may be people following you that would otherwise miss it.