(Published in The College of Westchester’s Newsletter, Julio 2014)
This has been troubling me for a while: When do you use Twitter favorites and when do you retweet?

In the past, ‘Favorites’ were used as a bookmarking tool on a mobile device to collect tweets with links or other interesting content that Twitter users want to look at in more detail on a PC, at home, or at work. Sin embargo, this has changed, and the whole purpose of clicking on ‘favorites’ is more than just archiving for later perusal.

Let’s say you come across a funny tweet. What do you do in order to share it? Favorite it or retweet it? What’s the difference?

Favorite – A little click on the star button and you’ve favored a tweet. The other person gets a notification that you’ve done that, and your tweet will be archived at the bottom of your page.

Retweet – This is when you decide that the content of a tweet is good and would be of benefit to your followers. Keep in mind that this is their tweet with their image and name on your timeline. Therefore, the content on that tweet can be considered as an endorsement if it includes an opinion or a political stance for instance.

A very simple way to explain the difference between a ‘favorite’ and a ‘retweet’ is by comparing them to Facebook activities: Favorites = like and retweet = repost. On Facebook, you ‘like’ things your friends say/post and you ‘repost’ or ‘share’ the things you want your friends to see as well.