Twitter to make retweeting easier, launches Retweet API

Twitter has finally and officially announced the intention to integrate the retweeting functionality into its microblogging platform, by launching the Retweet API. Currently, of course, people have to manually retweet or switch to a third party client, which makes the process easier. This new announcement however, promises to give a much needed facelift to the retweeting functionality.

One improvement which can be seen in the draft screenshots is that the retweet is not part of the tweet itself, but rather a separate link below the tweet. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter acknowledged that the current retweeting process was a rather unwiedly one, which involved copying and pasting. The facelift is under way, but Stone says its not quite ready yet:

We are still sketching out exactly how this feature and its API counterpart works. Sharing our thoughts before launching means developers will have the opportunity to prepare their applications. In a few weeks or so we’ll launch the feature on our web site and because app developers had a chance to prepare, it should become available across most of the Twitter ecosystem about the same time. This way, we can all enjoy retweeting—however we choose to access Twitter.

The new method of retweeting also promises other improvements in Twitters functionality. You may now be able to see all your friend’s original tweets that they are retweeting in your timeline. This feature will be helpful in terms of finding new people to follow, no doubt.

Marcel Molina, a Twitter Developer, had this to write about the new Twitter API:

Retweeting has become one of the cultural conventions of the Twitter experience. It’s yet another example of Twitter’s users discovering innovative ways to use the service. We dig it. So soon it’s going to become a natively supported feature on twitter.com. It’s looking like we’re only weeks away from being ready to launch it on our end. We wanted to show the community of platform developers the API we’ve cooked up for retweeting so those who want to support it in their applications would have enough time to have it ready by launch day. We were planning on exposing a way for developers to create a retweet, recognize retweets in your timeline and display them distinctively amongst other tweets. We’ve also got APIs for several retweet timelines: retweets you’ve created, retweets the users you’re following have created, and your tweets that have been retweeted by others.

Here are some more mock-up screenshots:

What do you think of the Retweet API? Do you think that Twitter will be able to give retweets a successful revamp? What are your impressions from the mock-up drafts?