(Pocket-lint) – Back in October Twitter made what seemed like a fairly significant change to how Retweets work on its app, stopping users from instantly Retweeting content by first prompting them to Quote Tweet it with a take of their own.
The idea was to encourage more thoughtful engagement with the presented information, and thereby discourage people from sharing things they might not have actually really considered or read.
However, Twitter’s now come clean to admit that the change didn’t really have the desired effect. While more people used Quote Tweets as a result, those Quote Tweets were largely sent out with microscopic, even one-word captions, which is hardly suggestive of deep and reasoned debate.Â
In fact, use of both Retweets and Quote Tweets fell by 20% overall after the change, which Twitter is unlikely to have been thrilled by. That’s one of a few reasons it’s given for why it’s rolling back the change.Â
The increase in Quote Tweets was also offset by an overall 20% decrease in sharing through both Retweets and Quote Tweets. Considering this, we’ll no longer prompt Quote Tweets from the Retweet icon. For more details: https://t.co/Were7yWdOz (3/4)
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 16, 2020
We’ll therefore soon all be back in the world of one-tap Retweets, able to share things without being encouraged to add our own context. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad one is likely to down to your own experience using the app.Â
Writing by Max Freeman-Mills.
