Honey Someone Stole My Tweet!

by Aaron on March 1, 2010

Recently I read tweets about other people mentioning about stealing tweets. Although some of the cases are true. Some cases are not.

Some people I know are great at sharing tweets while the one retweeted it did not include the original source or took out some names.

One of the twitter etiquette is always credit the original poster or tweeps who tweet them. If you don’t then maybe you will get away with it once or twice but you will not get away with it forever. Somehow one day people will find out that you stole tweets from other tweeps or twitterers.

However i found out that some tweeps really steal tweets. I know this is simply because some tweets are unique and not those link tweets.

I found out about this when the original poster of the tweet contacted me and so I saw her tweet was used by a verified twitter account and people retweeted that tweet and thought that guy was a genius. No names will be mention in this post. I also did search to check and make sure there were no misunderstandings.

Example:

Original Tweet:

Copied and modified tweet

Simply copy and paste tweet

As you noticed second tweet is identical with the first. Just the tweet has been modified.

I’m not so sure why some people prefer to copy tweets and do not bother crediting the original source of the tweet. Crediting the original source is one of the methods to build a relationship. When you retweet someone they will appreciate it and one day they might retweet you too.

However in some cases it is not exactly true. Some cases it might cause misunderstanding. Here are a few situations that may cause misunderstanding.

1. Tweet gets retweeted too many times and names are left out.

2. Tweets are too long (150 characters). The original twitterer wasn’t credited yet the one who RT-ed it got credited.

However, the fun part about twitter is sharing.  Twitter is about engaging as well and not only posting interesting tweets. So credit the  tweets and build relationship. That is the fun part about twitter. You do not have to “look” interesting. “BE” interesting by being YOU.

Picture source geekandpoke

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Tagged as: stolen, Tweets

  • Happened to me too, pretty early on my Twitter days. Didn't know the best approach to deal with it so I just let it go. Also I figure such people are repeat offenders and will one day get caught.

    (I peeked into my offender's timeline and had to laugh. He stole my stiff, grammatically cautious tweet - I was a Twitter newbie! - and it did look out of place within his own Twitter savvy updates.)

    Kudos to those ppl who take pains to credit original tweeters though. I've come across some who do that (actually take time to short and abbreviate several words to be able to insert credit) and it's no surprise that they have their followers' loyalty and respect.
  • What's your take on a RT with a content edit? My tweet used a national company purely as an example: "use a company like XX as a resource".
    RT: "Use XX as your resource" and sent from the company themselves. So it seemed like I endorsed them solely rather than used them as an example. Unseemly or no?
    (BTW my tweet was not personal but for my own business.)
  • People have been stealing tweets for ages Aaron. I guess it makes a difference to those at the upper echolon, but not me. Steal my tweets and i won't say a thing. We all know who tweets what type of content at the end of the day.

    Funny that i see people fighting all the time over stolen tweets (names obviously not mentioned) Get over it friends, it's only Twitter. Now if people where stealing your BLOG POSTS and not crediting you thats certainly another issue..

    Good post though, glad you brought it here on your blog..
  • This is an important issue on twitter and it runs into analytics. People shouldn't take others tweets directly from their streams. Most of us (advanced users & bloggers) create special (unique) links to see who and how many people are sharing what information. When you look at the results and see the same someone showing up all the time going about tweeting as if they were you; it's annoying, dishonest and messes up the results.
  • Your post is well written and I wanted to share valid arguments for both sides. I will admit I’m one of the people that complained (s) about the new RT option on Twitter. I still don't like it… but use it.

    Sure we all know Twitter is about sharing, I get it. As you stated in some cases when someone does RT and there are too many people on the string editing is the option. With that said, I have a high RT ratio, I love passing info around, testing different products etc. However, reciprocity is not easy on Twitter and in my humble opinion people that do "steal" don't really give a rats ass about sharing it's about their ego, their value is passed into who they are on Twitter.

    The other argument is you don't have anything worth RT'ing and that does something to the psyche. People do strange things, for ego.

    Here are some ideas, and if you are like me you don’t want to cut & paste a RT. I use Hootsuite, and Power Twitter, they give you several options to work with from- Reply, RT, DM, etc. on the dashboard.

    When it’s all said and done, I don’t really care about the RT’s on my links as I do about engaging. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting my stories RT’d, but I love when people actually take a moment and post a comment on the post. Sure it takes time, but more often than not it’s time well spent.
  • GRRRRRR! It's so annoying to see people passing around your tweet without any credit to you in it !
    Create your own tweets or just RT the darn thing. It's not so hard that you have to take from others !
  • I totally agree with you mate =)
    Some people are too lazy to add the rt lol
    "bad boy"
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