Project Retweet: Phase One (from the Twitter Blog)

"Some of Twitter's best features are emergent—people inventing simple but creative ways to share, discover, and communicate. One such convention is retweeting. When you want to call more attention to a particular tweet, you copy/paste it as your own, reference the original author with an @mention, and finally, indicate that it's a retweet. The process works although it's a bit cumbersome and not everyone knows about it. Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be. The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact and the more efficient dissemination of information across the entire Twitter ecosystem is something we very much want to support. That's why we're planning to formalize retweeting by officially adding it to our platform and Twitter.com" - Twitter Blog