Alex Kantrowitz, Buzzfeed, writing about developer Chris Wetherell, who built Twitter’s retweet button:

Before Wetherell joined Twitter, people had to manually retweet each other — copying text, pasting it into a new compose window, typing “RT” and the original tweeter’s handle, and hitting send.

And:

After the retweet button debuted, Wetherell was struck by how effectively it spread information. “It did a lot of what it was designed to do,” he said. “It had a force multiplier that other things didn’t have.”

This is a fascinating read, a look at what Twitter used to be and how significant a change was brought about by the retweet. Don’t miss the section towards the end with thoughts on ways to address the ills of Twitter and other social media platforms.