When Twitter’s internal retweet system (code-named Project Retweet) launched late last year I was one of a number of people who was resistant to the development. I’d grown accustomed to the original retweet (RT @ or via) and being unable to edit messages to add your own flavour was a major drawback of the new mechanism.

Things change. Over time I found myself using the new system, first on a very occasional basis but later with increased frequency. I’ve also noticed that other users appear to be retweeting my stuff more and more using the new-style RT – veterans and newcomers alike.

Sometimes, a tweet is so good that all you need to do is hold it up for other people to see. Twitter’s retweet button works perfectly here.

For certain occasions I still prefer the original RT, or more commonly via, which had always been my share method of choice. I don’t think I’ll ever go completely over to the dark side until Twitter gives us at least some edit options, even if it’s just for the free characters in the tweet.

But what about you? Are you sticking hard-and-fast to the old school retweet, or did you move straight over to Twitter’s method? Perhaps, like me, you do a bit of both? Or maybe you don’t retweet at all.

Whatever your answer, please vote in the poll below, and hit the comments to share your thoughts with me.

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I’m interested in all the ways that you interact with Twitter, including Twitter.com and everything else.

There’s not a lot of really good data on Twitter client usage and it would be nice if we could get a lot of votes here – my goal is to see at least a 1000 responses on this page.

Please share this poll with your friends and colleagues – click here to retweet this post and help me out. Thanks!

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If you can’t see the poll, please go here to vote.

(If you selected ‘other’, please expand on this in the comments. Thank you.)

Pretty simple question – have you ever clicked on a link in Twitter and gone on to make a direct purchase because of that click?

It’s a basic yes/no, but I’d like you to really think about it before answering. Certainly don’t dismiss this out of hand without some consideration.

Remember, this can be anything that resulted in a sale being made to you because of an interaction on Twitter – for example, a link that went to a book on Amazon that you bought. Or a t-shirt. Or a video game. Or a DVD.

Or it might even be participation in an affiliate program, or maybe somebody linked an eBay auction to Twitter, and you ended up clicking on the ‘buy it now’ button.

Anything. The only important part is the process began on Twitter, and ended with a sale.

(Note that I’m not asking if you’ve ever bought anything from Twitter. Those opportunities are yet to come.)

Hit the comments to expand on what it is that you purchased. I’m genuinely curious and would love to know the role that Twitter played in that sale.

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It’s been a huge year for Twitter. Huge.

Twelve months ago it was an evolving but fairly low-key social network where the most popular user had about sixty thousand followers.

Now, it’s an internet giant that has forced Facebook and Google to continually revise and re-evaluate their mission statements, and been embraced by the global media and general populace at an unprecedented level. And 220 users now have more than one million followers.

But what I want to know is: how important is Twitter to YOU?

I’d like you to consider this from the perspective of how you would feel if Twitter suddenly disappeared tomorrow. How would that make you feel? How would it impact your day-to-day life?

Please choose your answer in the poll below, and I encourage you to follow this up in the comments section.

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Like it or not, advertisements are coming to Twitter, and they’re coming soon.

“Twitter will have an advertising business, ready in the near future, and available to partners.” ~ Dick Costolo, Twitter COO.

The company has to make money. Nobody knows how or even where Twitter is going to implement this business model – Robert Scoble speculates it might come in the form of a supertweet – but this was always something of an inevitability. It’s also a bit of a no-brainer – Twitter is becoming so huge, ignoring this opportunity would be more than a little foolish.

But here’s the thing: they have to get it right. This is art as much as it is science or technical wizardry, trying to balance an online advertising model that is effective inasmuch as people see and click on the ads, but not at the expense of millions of others who categorise it as little more than spam. (And Twitter already has some pretty major issues there.)

Google is the benchmark for this, and Facebook has modelled their own advertising system after the Mountain View giant. But both of these have the luxury of the full screen to play with (they’re not limited to 140 characters), and the knowledge that their visitors are coming directly to them, and not viewing a version of their site through any number of external software clients. Whatever ads Twitter supports need to also go out to Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck, Tweetie, HootSuite et al, otherwise around three-quarters of the user-base will be completely untapped.

And what about disclosure? Does an ad have to clearly be labelled as such? And if so, what does that mean for the tens of thousands of Twitter accounts now that do nothing but link to affiliate schemes and ‘power systems’? Aren’t they ads, too? Or do only official Twitter ads count?

It will also be interesting to see if Twitter allows its users to participate in the revenue stream, like with Google’s Adsense program. After all – if they’re going to be making money off my tweets, shouldn’t I be entitled to a little of that myself? If not, then don’t be surprised to see a Firefox-style AdBlock bolt-on being made available to Twitter users shortly after ads are turned on.

Right, on to the poll. Let’s assume ads are a given – that sooner rather than later, we’ll start to see ads show up somewhere when we use Twitter. I want to hear how you feel about that. Please complete the poll below, and hit the comments to flesh out your thoughts.

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