There doesn't seem to be any font on my Windows XP system that includes this character :(
Daniel J. Pritchett
· 11 months ago
Same here! Have a screenshot of the image fail on XP. I've got Unicode turned on in FireFox but for whatever reason XP doesn't have the right character to render.
Chetan
· 11 months ago
♺ Looks like a nice symbol :) Retweets becomes smarter!
hillary hartley
· 11 months ago
Hopefully, iPhone apps and mobile Twitter sites can work toward displaying UTF-8 symbols. Unfortunately they just come through as a box -- same thing happens on my PC with screwy unicode fonts as well. Also don't think the symbols come through in SMS. But I'm sticking with it anyhoo. :) It's so much nicer than RT -- Twitter newbs have no idea what RT is when they first get started. ♺ at least provides some instant context.
stoweboyd
· 11 months ago
Client software can be regrooved to look for the code and render as a recycle. I agree about instant context.
howard
· 11 months ago
Taking nothing away from the idea which is indeed a better solution (for the 2 reasons cited: 1 character less and it is visually communicative), it is not instant. People still have to learn what it means in the Twitter context and what the conventions are for using it, just as with RT.
Chris Charabaruk
· 11 months ago
There's still the SMS issue. SMS is pretty much restricted to ASCII (ooooold).
AlexSchleber
· 10 months ago
I'd add to that the fact that you'll have a heck of a time searching/sorting for it in queries, e.g. I use "psychology filter:link -RT" to get a "Psychology" listener RSS into a FriendFeed Room, minus the DUPLICATES from retweets.
Keep it simple, the one extra character won't restrain you as much as you think.
New Retweet Symbol = FAIL
What is much more important however is that Twitter add a "Retweet" button to their design, right there with the (largely unused by people) Favorite "star" symbol. Clicking should correctly pre-populate your status filed "RT @...: ...".
While at it, they should also make it so that "Favorite" pre-populates the Status field with: "FV: ..." + faved status text, or some such. As it is now, Favorite is used very little because it has no (visible) follow-up action. Hence people stay away from it.
Piers
· 11 months ago
Am I just being dozy or is that just a square? Am I missing a font?
JodeeRich
· 11 months ago
Good idea Stowe - We'll include it in PeopleBrowsr in the next upload. Cheers
Jay16K
· 11 months ago
I think this special character sucks as RT symbol, because of the many different ways people use Twitter. E.g. i tested a few mobile phones with the symbol and everyone of them just displays a square symbol for a missing character. Sorry, but that's a no-go if it won't work on every device people use to twitter with.
Parsingphase
· 11 months ago
Surely Twitter's limit is 104 *bytes*? Which means UTF8 codes take up at least 2 bytes, and so you're saving nothing?
Yoan Blanc
· 11 months ago
"♺" is 3 bytes length "RT" is 2 bytes length like "<" and ">" are 4 bytes length (<, >)
You're not using less "space" by using less characters, sometimes.
cjp
· 11 months ago
even ttytter under Terminal.app renders this correctly. why is Unicode still broken on many apps, this is pathetic.
Holger Nauheimer
· 11 months ago
Hi Stowe, I tried your suggestion. But instead of the symbol, my tweet contained %u267A. Maybe it PowerTwitter doing this? It's Holger from Berlin
John Zeratsky
· 11 months ago
Can you send ♺ in an SMS? And how do you enter it on a phone?
jaxn
· 11 months ago
What about SMS?
Scytale
· 11 months ago
Too bad that this is actually one byte MORE than "RT", because it's a Unicode character, and its UTF-8 representation are the three bytes 0xe299ba. And, you know, even if Twitter says "140 characters", it's actually "140 bytes (butthewebinterfacecountscharacters, andanglebracketscountas4bytes)". That being said, the character is not available in SMS, except when you use Unicode messages, but then each SMS has, iirc, 70 instead of 160 characters. Plus, you mobile phone's font will most likely not have the character available at all.
Consider this idea dead on arrival. Its advantages are zero, except for maybe looking 1337. (Or, if you want, like another dumb Mac user who doesn't care about compatibility and has no idea of the internal workings of a computer.)
Vicki
· 11 months ago
This "dumb Mac user" can't see that character either. Don't blame the Mac. :)
Alice
· 11 months ago
yeah sure. my mac does recognize it. and actually mac users are smarter cause they don't give a shit about the inner workings of their computer but simply use it (in creating great things). they're not acting like stupid nerds or byte fuckers.
Paul Stamatiou
· 11 months ago
Interesting symbol to use for RT's.. unfortunately TweetDeck doesn't accept this. :-/
I've been using this symbol for retweets for months. Love it. Picked it up from somewhere ...
I even asked the developer of iTweet.net (a killer twitter interface, which has a "ReTweet" button) to start using it, which I think he may.
Daniel J. Pritchett
· 11 months ago
Edit: undeletable dupe.
Gregory
· 11 months ago
how do you make the recycle symbol happen?
mastermaq
· 11 months ago
What's wrong with RT? I see no benefits to this, aside from being one character shorter which isn't going to make a big difference. I admit that it isn't immediately clear what "RT" means, but it's certainly better than some odd character. If I just saw this character, I'd assume either the user entered something invalid or Twitter has a bug (I'm on XP and just see a bar).
I've been doing this for a few months with ♻ - it's easier to read. That said, due to the lack of understanding I tend to put RT alongside anyway as it has become the convention.
Vicki
· 11 months ago
That's not a recycle symbol. Or, at least, it sure looks like a '?' here in this web page. And therein lies the rub.
The problem with the fancy Unicode symbols is they don't necessarily work, either sending or receiving, for every Twitter client. AND this isn't necessarily "one character less than RT". Twitter already has a bug where it treats '>' as more than one character - and that's on most keyboards, at least in the US. I doubt the "recycle" symbol is on any keyboards. I can''t imagine what to press to get it.
Of course, it's easy to type a '?' but I'd probably ead that as "maybe @someone said".
Kevin Lim
· 11 months ago
I remember replicating @iTod in using ♺ as RT last year. I've since abandoned it since it doesn't appear properly in different platforms.
Albert Willis
· 11 months ago
I agree with the folks who are saying we aren't really gaining anything by using the symbol, since it can't be sent via SMS and it requires three bytes (out of 140) instead of using RT, which is two bytes.
Isn't it time that retweeting take it's proper place as standard function, like replies via the @ symbol or direct messages? It should also be added to the Twitter API so all 3rd party clients can access this functionality.
Digital Biographer
· 11 months ago
There's a neat browser shortcut, 'Twitterkeys' that links to a neat, 3-panel tool (just a small browser window) that shows a range of useful characters to copy and paste into twitter messages. Goes back to Septembe rlast year, too.
EDIT: Just spotted @boris comment above, didn't see it in my browse through earlier.
So please ignore me. ;-)
artgrrl
· 11 months ago
still cannot see the new symbol on my Mac with an older Firefox, guess I stick to using RT
Daiv Russell
· 11 months ago
Well, for some reason, I can't type that character in TweetDeck, nor does it actually show up in my web browser? I'm thinking that the universality of text such as "RT" might be the reason it started and persists.
All Comments
Retweets becomes smarter!
Keep it simple, the one extra character won't restrain you as much as you think.
New Retweet Symbol = FAIL
What is much more important however is that Twitter add a "Retweet" button to their design, right there with the (largely unused by people) Favorite "star" symbol. Clicking should correctly pre-populate your status filed "RT @...: ...".
While at it, they should also make it so that "Favorite" pre-populates the Status field with: "FV: ..." + faved status text, or some such. As it is now, Favorite is used very little because it has no (visible) follow-up action. Hence people stay away from it.
Cheers
E.g. i tested a few mobile phones with the symbol and everyone of them just displays a square symbol for a missing character.
Sorry, but that's a no-go if it won't work on every device people use to twitter with.
"RT" is 2 bytes length
like "<" and ">" are 4 bytes length (<, >)
You're not using less "space" by using less characters, sometimes.
It's Holger from Berlin
Consider this idea dead on arrival. Its advantages are zero, except for maybe looking 1337. (Or, if you want, like another dumb Mac user who doesn't care about compatibility and has no idea of the internal workings of a computer.)
I even asked the developer of iTweet.net (a killer twitter interface, which has a "ReTweet" button) to start using it, which I think he may.
http://thenextweb.com/2008/09/16/twitterkeys-en...
@Biz liked it, tweeted about it, then @ev tweeted it and then a lot of people started tweeting it! It made the front page of Digg and even Techcrunch:
http://thenextweb.com/2008/09/18/twitterkeys-th...
The problem with the fancy Unicode symbols is they don't necessarily work, either sending or receiving, for every Twitter client. AND this isn't necessarily "one character less than RT". Twitter already has a bug where it treats '>' as more than one character - and that's on most keyboards, at least in the US. I doubt the "recycle" symbol is on any keyboards. I can''t imagine what to press to get it.
Of course, it's easy to type a '?' but I'd probably ead that as "maybe @someone said".
Isn't it time that retweeting take it's proper place as standard function, like replies via the @ symbol or direct messages? It should also be added to the Twitter API so all 3rd party clients can access this functionality.
Created by @boris and the guys at The Next Web - http://twurl.nl/bbanlc
So please ignore me. ;-)