The world rejoiced when Twitter announced it was introducing a new comment retweet feature. For nearly nine years tweeps have longed for a way to add their own sentiments to a retweet in Twitter without resorting to third-party apps. Now we have it. When you click the retweet button, you are prompted to add your own thoughts in a compose window while the original post is embedded below your comments. You now have a full 140 characters to comment on something someone else has tweeted.

How Twitter’s Comment Retweet is Broken

Choosing this retweet option does not tag the original tweeter. Therefore, the original tweeter may never see that you’ve retweeted them, or that you are trying to talk to them! Have a look at this example I retweeted:

Twitter automatically gives me the option to comment on the original tweet, and nicely embeds the original tweet below my comment. However, unless you’re receiving notifications for every retweet you are fortunate enough to receive, you may never see that this was retweeted. You don’t get a notification of the embedded quote retweet.

I see comments in my Twitter feed all the time now that are linked to a retweet, but aren’t tagging the original tweeter, so the conversation ends.

How to fix Twitter’s Embedded Quote Retweet

It’s really pretty simple. If you want to ensure the original tweeter knows you’re talking to them, giving them a shout out, or support, then you need to add their handle to your comments before hitting send! Instead of the above, it would look like this:

All I’ve done here is tag the two accounts that tweeted out the information that I saw, so they know I did it. (Yes, if you’re paying attention, I own @CharityHFX and was absolutely talking to myself on Twitter. I’d do anything for my blog readers. Don’t judge me.)

How to Find Your Comment Retweets

Now that you know how to ensure your comments are seen, what about finding the ones directed at you that aren’t tagging you?

You can scroll through your notifications on Twitter. Notice @MadebyGretchen retweeted my retweet.

Or you can turn on your push/email notifications for retweets and get buzzed every time someone retweets you. Personally, that would drive me batty. I have nearly every push notification and butt-numbing phone buzzing option for everything turned off.

Twitter Will Evolve

Perhaps Twitter will see this (this blog, or this error) and update the new comment retweet again with auto-tagging. In the meantime, don’t forget the one simple thing you can do to ensure your comment retweets are seen by the original tweeter…use their handle in the comment.