“Don’t retweet me in the traditional way, please. Just take what you find, and pass it along” writes Alex Wilhelm, contributor to the NextWeb.com blog. His article displays a certain sense of angst which is most likely shared by many Twitter users out there.

I personally have little to no qualms with RT’ing, I also RT tweets in a very “traditional” manner. But, I want to try and understand a little of Alex’s piece, and also look at the wider picture for RT’s on Twitter.com.

RT’ing (short form for Retweets) have been part and  parcel of information sharing across the Twitter network for some time now, and helps to give credit to the original user who send the 140 character tweet out.

Firstly, I can certainly understand Alex’s concerns about the “undefined, closed loop” that RT’s can cause. It’s not helpful to have content being passed back to you via adding your @username to the RT, it piles up in your “Replies” section of your Twitter account, and can cause you to miss out on other @replies.

But, in my personal opinion I think that is about as much as I can agree