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    Have You Seen MT Instead of RT on Twitter? It Means Modified Tweet

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      Should You Modify an original tweet when retweeting?

      Sure, there are more burning questions in the world today, but I’ve come across this question on more than one occasion. Just last week I engaged in a conversation on Twitter about it and many were surprised to learn of the emerging MT standard.

      Awhile back, Twitter hijacked the organic, community established retweet or RT and made it into a native retweet button with no accomodation for commentary. However, many of us still use RT @username so we can add comments to retweets. Which leads us to the question — should you modify the language in the original tweet when retweeting it? Even if it’s just a spelling or grammar correction?

      Depends on who you ask, but it does makes sense to accurately represent the person you’re quoting. I became acutely aware of this a year ago when I was hit over the head for not using MT when the only thing I changed from the original tweet was putting an @ in front of the username the person referenced in his original tweet. That may be carrying it a bit too far, but I appreciated the lesson.

      Apparently MT had its genesis way back in 2009. Among the guidelines or reasons for using the MT designation that the author suggests are:

      • Correcting the content in a substantial way.
      • You’re uncertain of the accuracy of a correction.
      • Expanding the content in a substantial way

      Hmmm, substantial way is a very lawyerly thing to say. My advice is that if you’re in any way conflicted about sending out a retweet with even minor changes, like correcting spelling, use MT. The more we use it, the more it becomes a standard. And as standards go, it’s not a bad one.

      Note: If you use Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, they generally provide for one-click RTs where you can easily change the “R” to an “M”. Not so if you use the native Twitter on the web. To facilitate this, integrate your Twitter account with Buffer App which provides for one-click RTs and a range of other functions.

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