It is a common view that the optimum length for tweets should be the maximum length of 140 characters (including spaces and punctuation).  Wrong. 

A key element of the success of twitter is the extent to which information can be passed on, or the use of the retweet as it is commonly known.  Despite the recent introduction of a native twitter retweet function, the retweet or RT was created by users and the original method ‘RT @username’  is still the preferred means of retweeting.   If other users are to retweet your microposts without editing them, there needs to be space left for them to do this within the 140 character limit.   Therefore the optimum length of a twitter message depends on the length of your username and the simple equations is as follows:

x = 140 – (y+5)

In this formula x is the optimum length of the message in characters and y is the number of characters in your username.  The five is the number of characters required for using RT @, including the space – plus an extra space before the original tweet (thanks to The Crocodile for pointing out the need for that final space).  Geektatsic.

Twitter plans to add native retweeting to twitter.com.  In plain language that means that you will be able to automatically resend or retweet messages from your twitter homepage with a single click.  However the intention is to fundamentally change the nature of RTs in the process.  In essence the retweets will look like the original tweet with the image or avatar and name of the originator.  The fact that they have been propelled by someone or ‘retweeted’ will only appear in the faint information below the tweet (or the metadata).

Twitter co-Founder Ev Williams explains the reason for this in great detail on his EvHead blog.  The argument for the change is that tweets will be unedited (they often have to be at present to allow characters for the tweeters name), they will be correctly attributed and you wont see multiple retweets because “You will only get the first copy of something retweeted multiple times by people you follow”.   This fundamentally misses the pont.  By seeing multiple retweets you get a real sense of the saliency or level of interest in a particular tweet.  No-one rereads them all.  Another problem with the new retweet system is the very absence of the retweeter - except in the metadata, and there is no guarantee that twitter clients will show this metadata.   The identity of the retweeter is important because it is an endorsement and the value of that endorsement varies according to who is providing it…what if you get a retweet from @stephenfry or Ev himself but lots of people never see it because @joebloggs got in there first?.

Finally retweeting is not a concept originated by Ev Williams, Biz Stone or indeed anyone at Twitter it was originated by the community and belongs to the community.  Ev says in his post “I know the design of this feature will be somewhat controversial”.  My guess if that users will continue to retweet in the way that they do now and ignore the retweet function on twitter.com, and if they do this new feature will prove to be a real misjudgement. Fail.

Or didn’t as the case may be.  With his mood lifted by the Californian sunshine Stephen Fry returned to twitter within 24 hours of announcing his departure and apologised to Richard from Birmingham ( @Brumplum ) for the furore.  Richard for his part seemed to be bemused by the attention good and bad and contrite about his description of Fry’s musings. His follower numbers have risen from a couple of hundred to nearly 1500.  

It hasn’t gained much attention but the person who came out of this with the least to smile about was comedian Alan Davies, panelist on Fry’s QI show, who used his twitter stream on Saturday night to hurl abuse at anyone who didn’t agree with his take on the spat.  He has since deleted most of them but you can see a choice selection of them here.  Davies is of course the happy go lucky chap who once chewed a tramp’s ear outside a London nightclub.

The arrival of twitter lists has led to a frenzy of list publishing along with widgets and gadgets and even a dedicated on line directory called Listorious.  My issue with the majority of these lists are that they are too long. 

As a contribution to the current list mania I am publishing a top 20 PR and social media list of lists.  The criteria used are that in addition to being on subject, all of these lists are of a manageable size, specifically they list between 10 and 50 accounts.  The figures quoted after each list are the number of twitter accounts that they include at the time of publication.

   @benfurber/media-new-media-people  23

  @uwelang/socialmedia 47

   @kprzewuska/all-about-social-media  14

  @PressPRsVIPs/uk-prs  27

  @djshadow19/pr-ism 13

  @CaSuPe15/pr  20

  @missPRmonkeee/pr-people  14

  @PRProspect/feed  35

  @dorothycrenshaw/pr-sources  11

  @mmmkatya/pr-sm-news  35

  @miguelstil/everythingpr  50

  @jeanette_fuchs/socialmedia  18

  @Blinkblog/comunica-o  40

  @kbuddski/pr 13

  @alexleebehan/pr  33

  @robynslingsby/journalists-pr  25

  @paulruk/pr-watch  28

  @attrACTpr/social-media  35

  @LozanoRP/publicrelations  13

  @walker_pr/social-media  47

Following the twitter hack attack last week, thousands of accounts are still being hijacked by spammers who are using them to send bogus direct messages.  The majority being sent today appear to promote money-making scams.  Colin Byrne (@capbyrne) the CEO of Weber Shandwick in the UK and Europe is one of the latest victims.

The ‘phishing’ attach has been highly sophisticated.  The hackers have employed a bogus twitter login page to grab names and passwords.  It has also been reported that the players of the online game ‘Tribeswar’ have had their accounts hacked.   Users should check the connections tab in their twitter settings page and ‘revoke access’ for any applications that don’t know and trust.  When logging onto twitter check that the url is twitter.com before logging in.