Under the old rules of Twitter tradition, you "re-tweeted" another user by placing the letters "RT" before the quote and after any commentary you yourself added, like so:

If you use the new built-in re-tweet system, the original tweet would be copied into your stream under the byline of the original tweeter, like so:

The obvious problem: You lose the ability to actually say anything about what you're quoting if you use the new system. Also, all your followers are going to get a strange and potentially confusing avatar of someone they're not subscribed to in their stream.

On the bright side, this system is great for Twitter Inc. "Retweets potentially reveal very interesting data," Twitter CEO Evan Williams writes in a blog post about the new re-tweeting feature. Indeed, the feature offers a metric with which to rank tweets and thereby the results of Twitter searches and Twitter users themselves. Twitter could sell this data, provided free by its users, to the richest and most favored bidders, just like the microblogging startup did with the actual content of tweets.

The feature also helps Twitter's celebrity power users. Writes Williams:

RTs can actually be easily faked, which has become a form of spam, wherein well-known people are shown to be promoting something they never twittered about.

But, hey, if you don't like this new re-tweet thing that is so awesome for celebrities and Twitter Inc., you can always opt out. As Williams writes (emphasis from original), "you can turn off Retweets for everyone you follow (individually)." So just click "OFF" 200 times? Sounds super-easy!

(Top pic: Twitter co-founders Williams and Biz Stone, by Mathieu Thouvenin.)

"We are all Scoble now," Keen writes. Who? Scoble, a tech blogger who gained a measure of microcelebrity when Microsoft hired him a few years ago, makes videos so boring that Fast Company, his most recent employer, fired him. His lackluster videojournalism was not why anyone paid attention to him, of course; they're more attracted by the spectacle of his incessant use of microblogging service Twitter, where he has 67,000 "followers."

Keen argues that we must all follow Scoble's example and cultivate meaningless relationships that allow us to promote our work — that, indeed, with the collapse of Wall Street and Detroit, self-promotion is the only industry America has left. It's a depressingly accurate thought: A nation of Scobles, never producing anything but distracting people from that emptiness at our core by constantly talking.

He's certainly trying his best himself, assiduously courting the Twitterati to promote his next book, and ridiculing authors who do not engage in self-promotion, like Jonathan Littel, the writer of Holocaust epic The Kindly Ones:

For writers, the great publishing transformation over the next few years has nothing to do with the Kindle 2 or anything other supposedly miraculous technological device. No, the real revolution will be in the way we writers can take advantage of all this new digital technology — blogs, Twitter, interactive television, Internet radio etc etc — to better promote ourselves and our work. All writers — from $1,000,000 lottery-winners like Littel to the tens of thousands of professional writers like myself living off much smaller advances — need to think of self-promotion, both in physical and digital form, as intrinsic to our value.

A shy writer in the 21st century is a starving writer. Diffidence is death. Littel should set a better example. Come to America, Jonathan, and tell us more about your epic Nazi book. It's actually surprisingly nice here.

Ah yes, that's what we need: 140-character tweets about the Holocaust.

Johnson argues that the company needed the site to speak to young users. Well, sure: The site may well generate a lot of talk, and let young, spoiled millennials feel like a big, bad car company cares about them. But will keeping youngsters glued to their computers, complaining about their latest slight, move cars off dealers' lots? Affordable, energy-efficient cars that don't suck would speak far louder. We suggest a new slogan for the venerable car brand: "Keep America trolling."

Kudos to Google for recognizing that machine intelligence hasn't quite become our overlord yet, and that there's value in aggregating human effort — and for doing it more elegantly than Amazon.com's overcomplicated Mechanical Turk. Still, at least the Turk offered users a nominal fee. Google only offers the possibility of better search results to appeal to your self-interest.

The plan also offers opportunities for all sorts of bad behaviors, from harassment to mob rule. Just like Wikipedia! If you thought that Googlebombs mocking our current President, George Bush, were bad, wait until the public is allowed to vote bros up and hos down. Best-case scenario? We at least get a switch to toggle between the algorithm's tyranny, the wisdom of the crowd, and the self-affirming homogeneity of our social circle. (Photo by AP/Ric Francis)

You kidding? Culver knows better than to trust you people. The Pownce founder's new man is Flickr's Cal Henderson, according a tipster who implores us: "Trust me. You don't get a better source outside of Leah or Cal themselves." Another tipster gives us this eyewitness account from the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami:

I expected that Leah Culver story three weeks ago, since she was all over Cal Henderson at the FOWA beach party. In fact, it was so obvious I expected it to be headlining Valleywag the next day, not the Kevin Rose/Julia Allison stuff (which was barely anything).I don't know if any of you were actually at that party, but she was stumbling around following Cal like a little lost puppy, landing occasional kisses and tugging on his shirt to go out to the beach where they did who knows what. It was almost comically blatant.

Wales needs to think about the special attributes he — and he alone — brings to the Wikipedia brand. Wales is becoming known as a stud to end all studs, having bedded women around the world on Wikipedia-promoting junkets. Three words: user-generated condoms. Imagine the sum of all human knowledge unrolling before her eyes. Pick the right article to put on your article, and she'll edit herself right into your history. And worry not — they're as reliable as the information in Wikipedia.

That's just the beginning. What (or whom) would you brand with the august Wikipedia logo? The 250th commenter gets a free copy of Jimmy Wales: Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture on DVD.

We hear the difference between the two sites is that Yahoo Video will host longer, "professional" videos; Flickr will house shorter clips, three minutes or less — and at least at first, only from those who already have Pro accounts. The skilled visual artists who pay to use Flickr should take this as an affront. When it comes to still images, they're good enough to pay to be deemed pros. When they record moving images, they suddenly become amateurs in Yahoo's eyes. Flickr user riot: film at 11.

One could blame this plan on absentee management. After his paternity leave, Butterfield is not returning to a management role at Flickr. His wife and cofounder, Caterina Fake, didn't even attend the Flickr party. Flickr's de facto commander, Kakul Srivastava, came to Flickr from Yahoo after the acquisition. She previously worked on Yahoo's video products. That Flickr took nearly three years after she joined to roll out video doesn't speak well for her stewardship, either.

(Photo by Dan Farber/News.com)

People who talk about 'building community' should go be architects. Because people are not bricks.

Current has certainly been met with a lot of acclaim, but it's also entirely dependent on users (and journalism students) remaining interested in the project. If something as everyman as music videos couldn't command a younger generation's attention, will Current maintain a steady stream of fresh content — and viewers?

Citizen journalists, like everyone else, are most effective when they follow the law of comparative advantage: Let people closer to the story report on Kenya, as KTN is doing for the whole world. Let Scoble report on his own topic of expertise: Robert Scoble. The cause of this latest Scoble-doesn't-care-about-Kenya flap? That most inane form of bloggerthink: It wasn't on top of Techmeme, so it didn't happen. (Photo courtesy of Kenya Television Network)