Twitter has been rolling out new features for its web interface to small groups to get feedback and then full roll out.  It did this with Twitter Lists.   Over the weekend, I noticed that Twitter's beta retweet feature was available on my account and played around with it.

Brian Solis picks out what's interesting about it.

The new retweet feature is particularly interesting as it organizes your experience directly at Twitter.com much in the same way third-party clients such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic have offered all along. Unlike these desktop applications however, Twitter.com remains as the pervasive interface for engaging on Twitter. For example, your lists, real-time search results, DMs, Twitter stream, and now retweets are key pillars to the personal experience at Twitter.com. For most users, the new retweet functionality, combined with important, cached searches (including your username), the need to stray from Twitter’s online hub begins to dissipate.

Woodsy Owl: Give A Hoot, Don't Retweet Pollute!

The new feature makes re-tweeting a single step versus a two-step process.    What I don't like about it is that I can't add my own two ...

The final installment of Technorati's State of the Blogosphere survey from last week looked at the micro-blogging service Twitter. In particular, Technorati wanted to find out what use bloggers make of Twitter, and if they don't use it, why not?

Remember - this is a global survey of bloggers, not the general public. It's people who are at least vaguely familiar with Twitter.

As a result, not surprisingly, 73% of bloggers use Twitter and 27% don't. But for the quarter who don't it's still interesting to see that what I'd call 'Twitter myths' lead the reasons for non-use.

For example, 54% said they didn't feel the need to broadcast their lives (you don't need to), 38% said the content wasn't compelling (you pick and choose who you want to follow), while 35% said they just don't get it.

Among those that do use it, only a quarter (26%) are blogging less, which shows that more often than not the use of Twitter and blogs go hand in hand. Indeed, 69% actively use Twitter to promote their blog. This ties into a theme of previous posts, that Twitter is essentially a bridge to other media.

People listen to what's said and if something breaks, they take it ...

With the micro-blogging platform Twitter being valued a staggering $1 billion, Hitwise North America analyst Bill Tancer provides some food for thought.

In particular Bill asks whether the micro-blogging platform with the stated aim of being 'the pulse of the planet' is running out of steam based on visitor stats he's gone through.

Bill looks at US site visits, which is important overall as the US accounts for 60%+ of Twitter's user base. Of course, a large share of Twitter users don't go to the web-site but instead access it via their phones or an application such as Tweetdeck.

Nevertheless, the website should give some sort of indication as to the numbers signing up.

The Hitwise chart surprised me a little bit, as the 'Hitwise is the new Second Life' chatter seems to have died down since April / May.

From purely personal experience I've seen a lot more people sign up, and then only a month ago we were told by Comscore that Twitter is now more popular than the BBC or Craigslist in terms of traffic.

As a result, we probably need to wait and see until other metrics firms publish their stats.

And on the numbers, with 50+ million users, 2.5+ million of ...