Things Aren’t Looking Good For Retweet.com

I was actually pretty interested to see what Retweet.com had to offer when I heard that they finally went public. They’re a direct competitor to the popular retweet service Tweetmeme and a little competition is always a good thing. I also expected good things since they probably have the best possible domain for a service that’s all about retweets. I was a little surprised by what I learned later.

It seems that Retweet.com blatantly ripped off Tweetmeme’s code. Not only did they steal some of the JavaScript that makes the retweet button work, but they actually got a hold of the database format used on the back-end. It makes me wonder why I’d bother with Retweet.com when they can’t even develop their own code or construct a database to run their service. The following image shows an error message generated from Retweet.com’s code. Notice they have a table with Tweetmeme in the name.

Speaking of errors, it seems Retweet.com also has a few bugs. The primary purpose of the service is not only to make it easy for readers to tweet your stuff, but it’s supposed to give you an idea as to how much your content is getting retweeted. Accuracy is paramount in this case, but it seems that Retweet.com has some issues getting their numbers right. Obama is a popular topic, but I seriously doubt this link was retweeted over 3 million times.

They also have their own URL shortener, RT.nu,  that they’re not using. Seeing as how that’s a great domain for a URL shortener, it makes absolutely no sense for them not to use it. A quick scan of the top URL’s on the shortening service gives us an idea of why they might be avoiding it, though. Whether the proliferation of spammy links is the issue or something less sinister, it just doesn’t look good.

I, personally, won’t be switching from Tweetmeme to Retweet.com any time soon. Not even to win a $10,000  reward up for grabs. I think I’ll sit back and wait to see how this develops. Maybe Retweet.com will become a contender in the future, but as it stands, they have a long way to go and Tweetmeme shows no signs of letting them catch up.