Liking, Favoriting, Reblogging and Retweeting [en]

[fr] J'ai tendance à trouver que "like/reblog" (Tumblr) et "favorite/retweet" (Twitter) font un peu double emploi. Pas vous? Comment vous gérez ça?

I’m increasingly bothered by what I perceive as a kind of “double emploi” of “liking” vs. “re-ing” features. On Twitter, for example, you can favorite a tweet (see my favorites here) or retweet it (it ends up in your stream for your followers). On Tumblr, same thing: you can “like” posts (that seems to happen privately, though, I can’t find a public page collecting all my “likes”) or reblog them.

So, yes, there are slight differences in functionality. But overall, a pretty big overlap. Should I reblog or retweet something without favoriting or liking it first? I honestly tend to reblog and retweet and neglect the liking and favoriting (though now I’ve decided to feed my Twitter favorites into Digital Crumble, I’m favoriting too on Twitter).

I’d be interested to hear how others manage their likes, favorites, retweets and re-thingies. I expect I’m not the only one with overlap issues here.

4 thoughts on “Liking, Favoriting, Reblogging and Retweeting [en]

  1. As you said, there are functional differencies, so it depends on what you plan to do.
    On Twitter, where the fast spreading of information is vital (because it’s near real-time), retweets tend to be more used. I haven’t used not even once te favorite feature, because the amount of information is very small in a single Twitter post. But if the post contains a link to an interesting ressource, I just put the extended article on delicious

  2. I think the real issue for me is: does it make sense to retweet without favoriting? to reblog without liking? Shouldn’t a re-something imply a like/favorite?

  3. Re: public view of “likes” – you have to grant public access to viewing your “likes” in account/preferences. They’d then be available to see at http://www.tumblr.com/liked/by/%5Busername%5D

    I’m much more likely to reblog and/or “like” a post on Tumblr than a tweet. IMHO, it’s fine to reblog without liking – as you say, reblogging/retweeting carries the implication that you “like” the post. I guess I tend to “like” things that I appreciate but don’t necessarily want to appear in my own stream – things that I like but don’t need to push to my readers…

  4. I agree that I RT that which I like, and with Cretch that twitter is often time sensitive.

    However, I use favourites more like internet favourites – I mark a tweet so I can find it (and action it/follow up an intriguing link) later. I really wish there was a favourite function on the mobile interface – where browsing tweets works well, but many links point to websites better viewed on broadband or a larger screen. And then I often remove the favourite marking. In that way it’s much more of a personal “action later” flag than a recommendation for others.

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