UPDATED 00:08 EST / APRIL 07 2015

Twitter CEO Dick Costello NEWS

Twitter now allows users to fully comment on a retweet…on some platforms at least

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Twitter Inc. has finally given users a feature that they’ve long desired by adding the ability embed another tweet (a retweet) and comment on it in full.

Previously, when wanting to comment on a retweet, users were limited to commenting in the amount of characters left minus how long the retweet was, and for long retweets that often meant no space at all.

With the new quote function, users to able to add 115 characters worth of a comment to any tweet, with the size of that tweet being quoted being irrelevant to the ability to comment on it.

In terms of functionality, it also delivers another bonus in terms of the readability, and hence usability, of Twitter: the demise of the truncated Tweet.

Previously, due to the size limitations, users were often forced to truncate a tweet they wanted to retweet and comment on, often taking away the full context and meaning of the original tweet; creative to be sure, but not ultimately the best, not easiest outcome.

Now for the bad side: if you’re not an Apple iPhone user or use the Twitter web interface, you’re in for a wait.

Although Twitter surprisingly doesn’t mention this either in its promotion tweet (see below) or the help page that explains it, it’s currently not available for the official Twitter Android app, nor the Twitter owned Tweetdeck, the latter service sadly constantly ignored by Twitter since it was acquired for $40 million back in 2011. Why Twitter continues to ignore Tweetdeck over its obsession with its iPhone app will always remain a mystery given that Tweetdeck is the favored platform of choice for business users and those who use Twitter more seriously in everyday usage.

It probably goes without saying that the feature won’t be available on third party apps either.

A demo of how it works, via embedded tweet, as follows.


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