Twitter Filtering "RT @"? It's About Bieber...

#TalkNerdytoMeLover's According to Adam

Thanks to Alyssa Milano's Twitter feed (@AlyssaMilano) I was directed to this interesting blog post about how Twitter seems to be filtering any tweets with "RT @<USERNAME>" out of search. The blogger suggests that Twitter is "declaring war" on the traditional or classic method of retweeting in favor of their new method, which was introduced a few months back.

I think this is less about forcing people into the new method though, and more about accurately presenting Trending Topics. Or, to get more to the point, it's about Justin Bieber (and, with Twitter these days, isn't everything). If you use Twitter, you've probably seen this guy's name on the side of your browser window at some point. He's constantly trending. Why? Well, in large part, because his army of followers retweets pretty much anything and everything about him. Those retweets get retweeted, and eventually it's a massive loop of Bieber that nothing else can break into.

By filtering the "RT @" out of search, Twitter also removes those tweets from their impact on whether a topic trends or not. Therefore, you get a more accurate glimpse at what people are actually tweeting about, not just what they're parroting from their news feed.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, and until Twitter confirms that they ARE in fact doing this, and the reasons why, we can only speculate. But for now, I'm sticking with my theory, and I think it's a good thing if Twitter can return the trending topics box to what it used to be -- a quick glimpse of the service as a whole, not just Bieber fandom.

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