Two big things happened today in Twitter land: the Retweet feature was implemented across the site, and their call to action was downsized from “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?”  Here’s my take on the matter…

The new Retweet feature needs some work.  People don’t like changing something they’re comfortable with, and the Retweet button is far off from the original user-developed Retweet functionality.  The fact that you can’t insert your own text into a Retweet is very discouraging.  Part of its original appeal (at least to me) was that it empowered people to put their own spin on someone else’s tweet (just like a Tumblr reblog).  I also am peeved by the influx of people I don’t follow into my dashboard.  It’s a bizarre feature, not to mention a startling invasion of my private space.  I follow the people I follow because I choose to.  I was happy with the old RT and Lists for finding new people to follow.  I don’t need them to infiltrate my dashboard without permission.

Evan Williams explains Twitter’s logic behind the new RT here.  He acknowledges that it’s a different type of RT:

People understandably have expectations of how the retweet function should work. And I want to show some of the thinking that’s gone into it. I’ve been a big proponent of this particular design internally at Twitter, because, while it won’t serve every use case, I think it offers something new and powerful.

His reasoning makes sense (it’s essentially a cleanup job intended to increase visibility around attribution), but from a user’s perspective such a drastic shift in functionality doesn’t make sense.  I think it would have been universally embraced if all it did was eliminate the copy/paste procedure by adding “RT” to the text box.  Then Twitter could iterate until they were happy with RT.   I would have been much happier with the rollout if it slowly progressed to where it is now instead of taking a giant leap.  Oh, and the RT button is Tumblr’s Reblog button rotated 90 degrees :-)  I like that.

Then there’s the shift from “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?”  It’s not a seismic shift in functionality, but a shift in philosophy.  Biz Stone eloquently discussed the change:

The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates. Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. “What are you doing?” isn’t the right question anymore—starting today, we’ve shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, “What’s happening?”

This is much more in sync with Twitter’s “Pulse of the Planet” goal.  The new call to action won’t change the way people use Twitter, but it demonstrates a fundamental shift in the way Twitter thinks about Twitter.  It’s a movement from Twitter as a vanity tool to Twitter as a multi-purpose communication and reporting tool.  This isn’t new information, but it does mark a definitive and conscious change of focus for Twitter.

It’s been a big week for Twitter.  We’ve seen them take something the community created and change it as they saw fit, and we’ve also seen them embrace the way users utilize Twitter and let it change them as they saw fit.  It’s a prime example of understanding and adapting to user behavior.