Retweet Button Is Back After 5-Day Absence

The Retweet button is back. Apparently. For some of us.

Some users on this Twitter search thread early this afternoon announced they once again have access on their accounts to the new Retweet button feature.

Shortly after unveiling the Retweet button — and catching a lot of flak for it — Twitter withdrew the new feature last Wednesday, just as it was rolling out.

Twitter on November 11 posted this message on its status page:

Retweet feature temporarily disabled

We’re working on a few problems related to the ongoing rollout. These should be resolved quickly and it will be back on for those who had the Retweet feature previously. And we’ll then continue the incremental rollout of this feature to everyone.

I can’t say I noticed it was gone. The WebNewser Twitter account had the RT feature last week, but as of this afternoon it remains AWOL.

It’ll be interesting to see if the fixes included allowing users of the RT button to annotate or comment. That’s something the button released last week lacked, an omission for which Twitter was heavily criticized. Indeed, in his blog post announcing the RT button, co-founder Ev Williams anticipated complaints about not being able to edit a RT. “[I]t’s possible we’ll build that in at a later date. (This point should not be missed.),” he wrote. Maybe later came sooner. Let us know if you get yours back and whether you can edit what you’re RTing.

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