RT @dmataconis I can see it now. A bipartisan third-party ticket in 2012. Mark Sanford and John Edwards. With Eliot Spitzer Treasury Sec.
RT @dmataconis I can see it now. A bipartisan third-party ticket in 2012. Mark Sanford and John Edwards. With Eliot Spitzer Treasury Sec.
I’d see if there is a way you can filter out the RT’s from the twitter feed, they kinda don’t fit well on the blog 🙂
I would feel weird about filtering them out completely, because that’s almost like plagiarism — an RT is usually a direct quote, or at least a very close paraphrase, and without the “RT @whomever” I’d be essentially passing it off as my own words. Though I suppose you could still click the Twitter icon to see any RTs.
What might be cool would be to convert the RT information to metadata somehow, maybe appearing on the permalink page along with the categories and tags. And perhaps there could be some sort of icon, or small gray text, on the homepage, indicating that there’s re-tweet information on the permalink page. Then I wouldn’t feel like I’m plagiarizing, because the icon/text would be like a quotation symbol, effectively saying “click to see who this quote is from.”
I think it’s probably feasible, because the Fresh From plugin already filters the @statements to eliminate direct replies (where the first character of the post is @) and then turn all other @statements into links. I’d just have to teach it to differentiate “RT @whomever” from @statements without an “RT” (i.e., where I’m just *referring* to someone), and then tell it to do something different with the RT ones. Because I’m not exactly a PHP guru, it would take a lot of trial and error, but I could probably do it in the end. This sounds like a good project to work on while I’m up at 2 in the morning with the new baby. 😛
No no, i mean don’t post any that start with RT at all because they are basically a one sided conversation that really doesn’t make much sense.
But that’s not what an RT is. It’s basically the Twitter version of a hat tip, or more precisely I guess, a blockquote with a link to the post. When I RT someone’s Tweet, I’m essentially saying, “I like what this person said, so I’m going to re-Tweet it.” I’m not talking to them — I’m talking *about* them, repeating what they said. So I’m not having a “conversation” with Ezra Klein or Ana Marie Cox or Doug Mataconis or whomever; rather, I’m telling the world (well, my Twitter followers and blog readers, anyway) that I appreciated something about what they wrote, and felt it was worth repeating.
The plugin already *does* filter out posts that begin with @whomever (as opposed to beginning with RT @whomever), which is what I think you’re thinking of. *Those* types of Tweets are essentially direct messages to the other person, usually responding to something they said (hence, a “one sided conversation”). But RTs aren’t part of a conversation as such, and they aren’t really meant to be read by the other person. They’re meant to broadcast what the other person said.
Ah, in that case I withdraw my suggestion, I misunderstood what the RT’s were for not being a Twit er.. i mean Twitterer myself 🙂