Could "ReTweeting" Become Ground Zero For Virulent Political Influence?

Other than using Twitter a couple of times to point to some of Jon Stewart's hysterically funny videos, my public usage of Twitter (I'm "dberlind") is very much apolitical. I can't say the same however for the many people whose Twitter feeds I follow. It's becoming evident to me that it's not just what people are "tweeting" that could influence opinions, but what what they're "retweeting" or "RTing." Through retweeting, you can pretty much watch the virulence of some subject as it happens, in real-time.A individual post on Twitter -- like any of the ones I've done -- is often referred to as a tweet. "Tweet" is also a verb and refers to the process of posting a tweet to Twitter.

For those of you who have heard of Twitter but are afraid to go near it, Twitter is referred to by some as a microblogging service. But, from a technology perspective, it mashes the idea of broadcast & subscribe (a kissin' cousin to publish & subscribe) to SMS-based text messaging and puts it on the Web. With SMS text messaging on your phone, most "texters" send short messages (a 160 character limit) directly to specific recipients (a monocast model). With Twitter, you publish short messages (the limit is 140 characters) on the Twitter Web site and other people tune in by "following" you. Twitter offers a way to follow other members of Twitter.com or you can follow them using RSS.

A lot of Twitterers use Twitter to give up-to-the-minute updates on their whereabouts or ongoings. Something as simple as "I haven't eaten all day, so heading out for a bite." But, much like blogs, there's a whole separate class of tweets that were inspired by (and that link to) some other content on the Web. These could be news, videos, blogs, or anything. But it's what happens next -- the "retweet" -- when that content strikes a nerve that can stir up a genuine storm of dialog on the Web. A storm that can turn into a hurricane or a tornado (given how unpredictable the latter is).

Unlike with blogging where, for most, a bit of friction is involved in spreading the word about some other bit of content on the Web, microblogging services offer instant gratification. Particularly when a speed-enabling microblogging client like Twitterific (what I use) is at the microblogger's disposal.

In a political context, it goes something like this:

When there are characters to spare, there is a certain etiquette to retweeting: you credit the original Twitterer by using the word "Retweet" or the abbreviation "RT" along with a link to the original Twitterer's Twitter page or to the original tweet itself. To see the degree to which retweeting is taking place (covering way more than just the political spectrum of things), one only has to perform a "twittersearch" on "RT" and "retweet". To give you some idea of how frequently people are retweeting, just sit there and watch one of those twittersearches and it will tell you when the query results are no longer up to date (in other words, there have been new retweets).

Microblogging is clearly very hot with the tech, blogging, and journalism communities and a few other communities that are peripheral to those. So, on the one hand, it's easy to question the influence it might have over something important like an election or a new product. On the other, it doesn't take too many degrees of separation in this increasingly connected world along with a fountain of interesting tweets from someone like NYU's Jay Rosen to get a wildfire started. If you ask me, the only question is, "Which way is the wind blowing?"