Twitter Now Wants You To Tweet (Not Update)
A minor, but important change that’s been slowly creeping its way into Twitter.com this week. And now that I’ve got it, I assume everybody has – Twitter has replaced the ‘update’ button on the website (below the text box) with the insular, but significantly more definitive, ‘tweet’.
Twitter has been furiously trying to trademark both tweet and retweet in recent months, with little success. In November, the company adjusted the call-to-action text on the homepage, changing it from ‘What are you doing?’ to the more philosophical ‘What’s happening?’
It’s all about the little things.
Still, it’s fairly evident that the platform has been moving away from being a simple status update service, both in terms of how it is seen and wants to be seen, and this change likely reflects that forward-thinking.
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While probably more accurate (though “Update” was fairly accurate, albeit in a technical sense, in that you were “updating” your timeline), I don't like the new “Tweet.” It looks lame, sophomoric, childish. It makes me think of the word “sweet” every time I see it, or make me think I'm in some childish web game. (Twitter is for grown-ups, dammit!
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“Tweet” has always been what the update has been called, and I never minded it. But using it in verb form just simply annoys the hell out of me….
I guess they're trying to do a Google, and make tweet an every-word that becomes an accepted part of pop culture and our consciousness.
Maybe they should let you configure your own word? I bet there's a Greasemonkey script for that. I vote for GET TO DA CHOPPER.
Yeah; but even Google doesn't take it to that extreme. Imagine how lame it would be if, after typing your search terms in at google.com, you clicked a “Google” button to perform the search!! I think I would stop using the search engine for that reason alone!
Yet I always talk of “googling” something, as I talk of “tweeting” someone. But having to click a “Tweet” button is just incredibly pathetic and lame.