Reblogging

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Reblogging (or, in Twitter parlance, reposting and formerly retweeting) is the mechanism in blogging which allows users to repost the content of another user's post with an indication that the source of the post is another user.

Contents

It was first developed by Jonah Peretti at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center's R&D program under the project 'Reblog' (from where the term originates) as an open-source tool for individually-run blogs. Tumblr then built it into their social network for re-sharing posts within the network, and similar features ("Retweet" on Twitter, "Share" on Facebook) then followed.

For a number of microblogging and social networking services, reblogging has become a means of both social bookmarking and user commentary; unlike social news services like Digg, Slashdot, and Reddit, however, reblogging typically does not involve a centralized "front page" to which the highest-ranked post is appended.

Reblogging (and the increased attention paid to the indexing and encouragement of reblogging) has become a major feature of many social networking sites and content-hosting services, and it has also become a potent means of secondary content promotion and audience measurement whereby links to external content are syndicated across multiple profiles and the reposts are indexed as a measurement of currency and relevance.

History and comparison

A historical precedent to reblogging is the viral nature of e-mail, as "Internet petitions" and "chain e-mails" which encouraged e-mail users to "resend" the e-mail to at least a minimum number of contacts on one's contact list were highly popular (and highly controversial) in the 1980s and 1990s. With the rise of the World Wide Web, it was not uncommon for webmasters, including major news service websites, to encourage readers of a post to share a link to the post with others on one's contact list. Only in the mid-2000s was the "share via e-mail" solicitation accompanied or replaced by branded "sharing" buttons from various social news or bookmarking services at the time, giving bloggers and news services a seemingly more accurate metric for readership and traffic than ever before; the issue of user moderation, however, gave bloggers and news services pause due to both real and alleged competition in moderation ranking of shared "front-page" posts. With the rise of micro-blogging in the latter 2000s, however, user moderation on front pages was de-emphasized as a feature in favor of "reblogs" on user profiles, which were usually taken by bloggers and news services as automatic endorsement of an original/linked post's currency, if not popular favor.

Reblog

Reblog was an open-source tool made at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center's R&D program, a team led by Jonah Peretti along with Michael Frumin, Michael Migurski, Alexander R. Galloway and Boris Anthony. [1] 'Reblog' was an open-source tool for individually-run blogs, with many early new media artists and bloggers using the tool to share content from one blog on another.

Tumblr

In 2007, Tumblr, a blogging service and network, launched. It is profile-driven and hierarchical in its facilitation of "reblogs". An original post by one Tumblr user is reblogged by another user by embedding a quote of the original post, link and publishing username in the repost, with the option of making a comment in reply to the previous post.

A feature of this method that distinguishes Tumblr from Twitter is that less emphasis is placed upon reblogging only the original post, resulting in often highly stacked semi-threaded conversations which are indexed and interpreted by the Tumblr server in the presented manner. While Twitter's character limit allows for little to no personal response, a Tumblr reblog allows for an endless amount of interpretations of the subject matter. [2] As a result, posts to Tumblr are typically shown less as typical blog posts (as offered by most major blog providers) and more as a blend of both Internet forum and blog features. Another difference between the two platforms is that Tumblr reblogs are more often visual, while Twitter is more message-based. [3]

Twitter

On Twitter, another micro-blogging service, the "retweet" phenomenon began in March 2007, whereby an informal protocol slowly developed among Twitter users. Initially called an "echo" the first instance was by Narendra Rocherolle. [4] A month later the term "retweet" was first referenced. [5] In this protocol, a post by User A which was considered notable by another Twitter user, User B, was copied by User B and reposted under User B's account and prefixed with "RT @username", with "RT" meaning "retweet". The at sign had previously been developed as a means of replying to Twitter posts, while the hashtag protocol would later be developed by users within the same year to highlight important keywords which they wished to be indexed in a search engine.

In 2009, the "retweet" phenomenon would experience a major uptick in adoption by Twitter users in order to forward SMS posts by Iranian observers and participants in the events following the Iranian presidential election.[ citation needed ] In August 2009, Twitter officially began integrating the "retweet" mechanism by replacing the string "RT @username" with a retweet symbol emulating Tumblr's reblog symbol; [6] [7] in addition, retweet buttons were added to all Twitter posts (alongside "reply") and, by August 2010, an official "Tweet button" was developed and launched by Twitter for external websites, [8] with Twitter-based application developer TweetMeme agreeing with Twitter to integrate the functionality of its own then-popular button into Twitter's official button. [9] In April 2015, the "quote retweet" (also known as "Quote RTs" or "QRT") was introduced, with users able to retweet a post with their own commentary added above the original content. [10] In August 2020, a "Quote Tweets" link was added under posts to allow users to see other users' quote retweets. [11]

Tweetmeme, Topsy and a few other external third-party websites provide indexes of currently trending posts, hashtags, users and lists utilizing the Retweet protocol. As such, Twitter is a powerful flowing social medium that disseminates instant news through an array of social media networks. [12] The Twitter platform is a broadcasting service and a social network of open access of media through subscriptions by request or follow. [12]

Facebook

Facebook, while not promoting itself as a social bookmarking, social news or micro-blogging service, eventually also began allowing users to share links to and comments on external webpages to their walls, and notably to re-share posts from other users' walls with a single click of an attached "Share" link, "reblog-style". In addition, buttons for publishers to automatically share their posts on Facebook and index the current number of user links to the linked post are available.

Analysis

With the growing popularity of reblogging or re-syndication in the latter 2000s and early 2010s, a number of analyses have been offered on the functionality and value of the practice. Data scientists have shown that "retweeting cascades" play an important role in the spread of misinformation online. [13] Chris Wetherell, creator of retweets for Twitter, described what he saw as negative consequences of retweets, stating, "We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon". Andy Baio found that about two thirds of the Gamergate harassment campaign tweets during a 72-hour period that he studied were retweets. Jason Goldman from Twitter described quote retweets as the riskiest form of retweet, stating, "Quote retweet allows for the dunk. It's the dunk mechanism." [14]

Linguists and philosophers, [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] have studied the communicative value of retweets: if, as the popular motto goes, "a retweet is not an endorsement", what is the meaning of a retweet? The predominant view [17] [18] [20] [21] is that retweeting is like pointing at someone else's post (i.e. directing attention to it), or inviting one's audience to pay attention to it. RT is a popular acronym on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, meaning 'Regards To' and 'Re-Tweet' respectively.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

A blog is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. In the 2000s, blogs were often the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Vox was an Internet blogging service run by Six Apart. Announced on September 21, 2005 by Six Apart president Mena Trott at the DEMO Fall conference under the codename "Project Comet," the site began private alpha testing in March 2006. In June 2006, the site entered public beta—opening registration to outside users on a limited basis via an invitation system—and transitioned to its official name Vox, moving the site to the domain Vox.com. Vox officially launched on October 26, 2006, with registration opened to the general public.

Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, service brand or event. Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news, bookmarking sites, and social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, video sharing websites, and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search engine optimization (SEO) in that the goal is to generate web traffic and increase awareness for a website. SMO's focal point is on gaining organic links to social media content. In contrast, SEO's core is about reaching the top of the search engine hierarchy. In general, social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content to encourage more users to use and share links to the website across social media and networking sites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twitter</span> American social networking service

X, commonly referred to by its former name Twitter, is a social media website based in the United States. With over 500 million users, it is one of the world's largest social networks and the fifth-most visited website in the world. Users can share text messages, images, and videos through posts. X also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists and communities, and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature.

HCL Connections is a Web 2.0 enterprise social software application developed originally by IBM and acquired by HCL Technologies in July 2019. Connections is an enterprise-collaboration platform which aims to helps teams work more efficiently. Connections is part of HCL collaboration suite which also includes Notes / Domino, Sametime, Portal and Connections.

Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the major reason for their popularity. Some popular social networks such as Twitter, Threads, Mastodon, Tumblr, Koo, and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.

Mobile blogging is a method of publishing to a website or blog from a mobile phone or other handheld device. A moblog helps habitual bloggers to post write-ups directly from their phones even when on the move. Mobile blogging has been made possible by technological convergence, as bloggers have been able to write, record and upload different media all from a single, mobile device. At the height of its growth in 2006, mobile blogging experienced 70,000 blog creations a day and 29,100 blog posts an hour. Between 2006 and 2010, blogging among teens declined from 28% to 14%, while blogging among adults over 30 increased from 7% to 11%. However, the growing number of multi-platform blogging apps has increased mobile blogging popularity in recent years creating a brand new market that many celebrities, regular bloggers and specialists are utilizing to widen their social reach.

FriendFeed was a real-time feed aggregator that consolidated updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and microblogging updates, as well as any type of RSS/Atom feed. It was created in 2007 by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh. It was possible to use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share, as well as originate new posts-discussions, with friends. Friendfeed was built on top of Tornado. The service was shut down at about 21:00 GMT on April 10, 2015, though the service blog announced it a month before.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tumblr</span> Microblogging and social networking website

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tweet (social media)</span> Short blog post on X (formerly Twitter)

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