Reblogging
Encyclopedia
Reblogging is the mechanism in microblogging
which allows users to repost the content of another user's post with an indication that the content of the repost is a "reblog" from another user. 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.
, as "Internet petition
s" 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.
Twitter
On Twitter
, the "retweet" phenomenon began around March 2008, whereby an informal protocol slowly developed among Twitter users. 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 prepended with "RT @username", with "RT" meaning "retweet". The at sign
had been previously 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
. In August 2009, Twitter officially began integrating the "retweet" mechanism by replacing the string "RT @username" with a retweet symbol; 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, with Twitter-based application developer Tweetmeme agreeing with Twitter to integrate the functionality of its own then-popular button into Twitter's official button.
Tweetmeme, Topsy and a few other external third-party websites provide indexes of currently-trending posts, hashtags, users and lists utilizing the Retweet protocol.
, another micro-blogging service, is also 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. 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.
Facebook
Facebook
, while not promoting itself as a social bookmarking, social news or micro-blogging service, allows users to share links to and comments on external webpages to their walls. 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.
stated their views of the retweet as a virtual "currency" system
; LeBleu endorsed the idea of a "favour bank" (or "banco de favores") as put forth by Paulo Coelho
in his 2005 novel The Zahir, while Arrington (stating his opinion in light of the recent launch of Topsy, a micro-blog search engine which endorses the view of retweets as currency based upon "influence") cited journalist Jeff Jarvis
, who wrote in 2005:
However, LeBleu's version of the "retweet bank" interprets the virtual currency model in the following manner:
while Arrington's version - from the perspective of the importance of web search engine
s in driving link-based
traffic to web pages - interprets the model in the following manner:
Microblogging
Microblogging is a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size...
which allows users to repost the content of another user's post with an indication that the content of the repost is a "reblog" from another user. For a number of microblogging and social networking services, reblogging has become a means of both social bookmarking
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
and user commentary; unlike social news
Social news
A social news website is a type of website that features user-submitted stories that are ranked based on popularity.-Slashdot:Slashdot, started in 1997, was one of the first social news websites. It focuses mainly on science and technology related news. Users can submit stories, and the editors...
services like Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
, Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
and Reddit
Reddit
reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
, 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
Audience measurement
Audience measurement measures how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic on websites...
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-mailE-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, as "Internet petition
Internet petition
An Internet petition is a form of petition posted on a website. Visitors to the website in question can add their email addresses or names, and after enough "signatures" have been collected, the resulting letter may be delivered to the subject of the petition, usually via e-mail.-Pros and cons:The...
s" 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
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, 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.
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, the "retweet" phenomenon began around March 2008, whereby an informal protocol slowly developed among Twitter users. 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 prepended with "RT @username", with "RT" meaning "retweet". The at sign
At sign
The at sign , also called the ampersat, apetail, arroba, atmark, at symbol, commercial at or monkey tail, is formally an abbreviation of the accounting and commercial invoice term "at the rate of"...
had been previously 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
Iranian presidential election, 2009
Iran's tenth presidential election was held on 12 June 2009, with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running against three challengers. The next morning the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official news agency, announced that with two-thirds of the votes counted, Ahmadinejad had won the election...
. In August 2009, Twitter officially began integrating the "retweet" mechanism by replacing the string "RT @username" with a retweet symbol; 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, with Twitter-based application developer Tweetmeme agreeing with Twitter to integrate the functionality of its own then-popular button into Twitter's official button.
Tweetmeme, Topsy and a few other external third-party websites provide indexes of currently-trending posts, hashtags, users and lists utilizing the Retweet protocol.
Tumblr
TumblrTumblr
Tumblr is a website and microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use. The site ranks as the 10th...
, another micro-blogging service, is also 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. 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
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
and blog features.
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, while not promoting itself as a social bookmarking, social news or micro-blogging service, allows users to share links to and comments on external webpages to their walls. 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. RT is a popular acronym on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, meaning 'Regards To' and 'Re-Tweet' respectively.As virtual currency
In 2009, commentators such as Gillaume LeBleu and Michael ArringtonMichael Arrington
J. Michael Arrington is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere...
stated their views of the retweet as a virtual "currency" system
Virtual currency
Virtual currency is used to purchase virtual goods within a variety of online communities; which include social networking websites, virtual worlds and online gaming sites....
; LeBleu endorsed the idea of a "favour bank" (or "banco de favores") as put forth by Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist.-Biography:Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical,...
in his 2005 novel The Zahir, while Arrington (stating his opinion in light of the recent launch of Topsy, a micro-blog search engine which endorses the view of retweets as currency based upon "influence") cited journalist Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis is an American journalist. Previously he was a television critic for TV Guide and People magazine, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner.-Career:Until recently Jarvis was...
, who wrote in 2005:
"Just remember this: In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. Links equal value."
However, LeBleu's version of the "retweet bank" interprets the virtual currency model in the following manner:
- one's own repost of other's posts = means of gaining influence currency
- other's reposts of one's own posts = loss in influence currency,
while Arrington's version - from the perspective of the importance of web search engine
Web search engine
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...
s in driving link-based
Link Analysis
In network theory, link analysis is a data-analysis technique used to evaluate relationships between nodes. Relationships may be identified among various types of nodes , including organizations, people and transactions...
traffic to web pages - interprets the model in the following manner:
- the repost by someone else of one's own post = means of accruing influence currency
- one's repost of another user's post = the loss of influence currency.