I spend a lot of time working on ReTweets, mostly because I believe them to be one of the most important developments in modern communications, extending far beyond the Twittersphere.
“Ideas shape the course of history.”
-John Maynard Keynes
Ideas have been spreading from person to person for thousands of years; contagious ideas form the very foundation of human culture and history. Like “The Matrix” was composed of computer code, the real world is made of infectious information. Your chair, your desk, the computer you’re reading this on, the food you’ll eat today, the money you’ll earn; they all began as ideas jumping from person to person. None of it would exist if the concept wasn’t contagious.
For the last few millennia people have been telling each other about which god to believe in 
and which laundry detergent works best.
“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”
-Victor Hugo
Contagious ideas are the most powerful force in our world. Ideological epidemics have made and lost fortunes, they have saved countless lives and caused horrific wars, they have birthed and destroyed nations. Clearly the most powerful weapon known to man would be the ability to create powerful mental viruses at will. The very course of human history would be at your whim.
And remember, you don’t spread ideas just because they are “good;” you spread them because of some other trigger or set of triggers has been pulled in your brain. And that trigger fires the biggest gun ever seen.
Rudimentary attempts of this sort of engineering have been made to sometimes awe-inspiring ends; however, those successes have most often been based on luck and happenstance.
A reliable, repeatable method to craft a contagious idea has yet to emerge.
“If the Internet can be described as a giant human consciousness, then viral marketing is the illusion of free will.”
-George Pendle
The advent of the web changed how memes spread: it made them spread faster, it exposed them to 
more people, and it removed many of the constraints imposed by the limits of human memory. Obviously, post-web idea viruses are more contagious. But there is one change that dwarfs them all: observability.
Before we can purposely create a more contagious idea, we have to understand which elements make an idea contagious. The problem has been that for thousands of years there has been no way to observe memes in aggregate. Only anecdotal evidence could be analyzed, and, in areas like urban legends, rumors, and slang, these unreliable sources provided our only clues.
We can now compare millions of viral ideas to uncover the building blocks of contagiousness.
The structure of the web has made this sort of observability possible from a theoretical standpoint for over a decade. ISPs could have tracked email chain letters, or IMs from person-to-person, but technological and privacy issues prevented that.
ReTweets change all of this.
ReTweets may seem like a small idea, and they are. But that small idea is the first real window into how ideas spread from person to person. We can study the linguistic traits, the topical characteristics, the epidemiological dynamics, and the social network interactions that take place when a person spreads a meme.
Not only can this information help us create more contagious Tweets, but many of the lessons learned through ReTweets will be applicable to viral ideas in other mediums.
For the first time in human history we can begin to gaze into the inner workings of the contagious idea. That most powerful force can now be put under our microscope and probed for its secrets.
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July 9th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
a single retweet tells little, it’s figuring out why/how something gets retweeted multiple times that will provide the useful information.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
The interesting thing about the decision to retweet (for me anyway) is that it does not so much reflect what I like per se so much as it reflects what I think others will like.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Hi Dan, Love this. I find one thing I love is to open my home page on Twitter and see what’s there that captivates me that was tweeted within the last few minutes. It’s purely random, but is it really. By my choice I’m following these people because they have something to say.
It’s cool to be able to study the structure and spread of memes, at the same time, there’s something about studying it that takes the spirit and spontaneity out of it. In other words, I’m not sure the spirit can be captured and recreated without some robotic quality that will surely fail. Perhaps it might create some huge logjam of contagious tweets and retweets so it’s no longer fun to use social media.
Anyway, that’s my first take on the matter.
Thanks for starting the discussion,
Pamela
July 11th, 2009 at 4:32 am
To me, reTweeting is sometimes more powerful than “original Tweets” that I write, especially if I am RTing a blog post or website. I am exposing more people to that information with the click of a mouse. The person who’s post I’m RTing may get more visits, sales, comments, subscribers or clicks just because I made that very simple move.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
great approach!…i must admit, i use RT’s to implement my own POV…
July 14th, 2009 at 4:25 am
How ideas are transmitted, and the effect they can have on a society is something that i have been interested in for a while. Something good for me to read on a Tuesday morning, thanks.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Hey Dan;
Really enjoyed the video!
Drop me a line when you get a chance.
All my best!
Mike
July 19th, 2009 at 3:58 am
I read the comments and I agree with them all. I think Carla said it best though – that retweeting is even more powerful than original posts. Ithink it’s because it gets to be passed on to more people which is great!
July 26th, 2009 at 6:20 am
I’m not so sure and bit more cynical. I think a lot of people think they should be tweeting something everyday, if they have nothing new then they just retweet something else.
August 20th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] study ReTweets because I believe they offer an unprecedented window into how people spread ideas. And while Twitter may be threatening to mangle them, I think [...]
August 21st, 2009 at 1:38 am
[...] study ReTweets because I believe they offer an unprecedented window into how people spread ideas. And while Twitter may be threatening to mangle them, I think [...]
August 26th, 2009 at 10:20 am
[...] you’ve read this blog, you know that ReTweets are one of my favorite topics. For a ton of reasons I think that they’re not only one of the [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Someone asked about celebrity ReTweets on a related so here's a short (5 slide thread) that I happened to catch “live.” 5 slide presentation on Celebrity ReTweet influence. Includes Jason Pollock @Jason_Pollock @Alyssa_Milano & Mayor of Newark, NJ @CoryBooker and Jeremiah Owyang – @Jowyang.
http://www.slideshare.net/PainPoint/celebrity-a...
Enjoy,
-Andy Fields
@PainPoint
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Websites are always helpful in one way or the other, Ideas have been spreading from person to person for thousands of years; contagious ideas form the very foundation of human culture and history. Like “The Matrix” was composed of computer code, the real world is made of infectious information. Your chair, your desk, the computer you’re reading this on, the food you’ll eat today, the money you’ll earn; they all began as ideas jumping from person to person. None of it would exist if the concept wasn’t contagious. anyways, instant loans a good way to get started to renovate your dreams into the world of reality.
Thanks
Micheal,
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:34 am
Websites are always helpful in one way or the other, Ideas have been spreading from person to person for thousands of years; contagious ideas form the very foundation of human culture and history. Like “The Matrix” was composed of computer code, the real world is made of infectious information. Your chair, your desk, the computer you’re reading this on, the food you’ll eat today, the money you’ll earn; they all began as ideas jumping from person to person. None of it would exist if the concept wasn’t contagious. anyways, instant loans a good way to get started to renovate your dreams into the world of reality.
Thanks
Micheal,