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I don’t want to post tweets like “RT @-other-account-: original-tweet”; I want to use the Twitter native retweet function. (The differences include that people can block the retweeted account; that the retweeted account’s avatar is shown; and that I don’t waste characters with the “RT @-user-:” prefix.)

Is there any way to do this? I would be cool with throwing a little app up on Heroku if necessary, but surely there is a service that can provide this already?

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    ha, what a stupid question closure. The question is not asking for app recommendations; that’s just what the answerers posted.
    – Alan H.
    Nov 5, 2014 at 1:32

6 Answers 6

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There is up-to-date free auto-retweet service RoundTeam. It has a lot of retweet options and is easy to use.

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  • It doesn’t do native retweets, though, right? That seemed to be the case last time I checked.
    – Alan H.
    Jul 19, 2012 at 18:32
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    RoundTeam does ONLY native retweets from the day this app was created) Please, check it one more time. They have several new features, as I know during the previous several weeks. I use "retweet from Twitter public list" feature - happy they have it - I can retweet from group of users.
    – Ganna
    Aug 5, 2012 at 5:42
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    Okay, you’re right. I tried RoundTeam but found it extremely difficult to understand. I still do.
    – Alan H.
    Aug 7, 2012 at 20:27
  • I figured it out. You have to add your Twitter account (the one that will do the retweeting) as a “Team”. Then you just add the specific username you want to retweet, to the right of “following” or “followers” as appropriate (you need to follow or be followed by them, it seems).
    – Alan H.
    Aug 7, 2012 at 20:40
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This is actually skirting the line of allowed use of automation from Twitter Automation Rules and Best Practices.

Automated Retweeting of Other Users

Retweeting someone means you think your followers should see their tweet. When you’re retweeting in an automated fashion, and especially based on an automated search or keyword, this becomes less true.

We discourage the automatic retweeting of other users based on a particular keyword and may suspend or terminate accounts that engage in this behavior, particularly if they are being frequently blocked and reported as spam by the users they are retweeting. If you are retweeting users just so they will see your update in their replies folder and look at your account, this is akin to @reply spam and your account may be suspended or terminated.

Now that the disclosure is complete, here is the API you'll need: Twitter Rest API Retweet.

This API call requires a valid OAuth token as well for the user executing the retweets.

The link also has an example. I'm not posting information for posterity here because Twitter changes their API somewhat frequently and even though the link will stay valid, the information within it is much more fluid.

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  • for the record: I own & manually post to both accounts in question. I’m absolutely not retweeting third-party users or misleading anyone in any way.
    – Alan H.
    Mar 19, 2012 at 3:53
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    I don't necessarily agree with the idea of auto-retweeting because two separate groups of people are following the two separate accounts and they may just want a choice to follow the other user (or the occasional retweet). However, I wanted to keep my opinion out of the answer. I've edited the answer to include the API call that you'll need to accomplish the task that you want.
    – Rebecca Dessonville
    Mar 19, 2012 at 15:09
  • As far as services that already handle this there isn't any that I could find that don't setup an RT @blah I said stuff type of retweet.
    – Rebecca Dessonville
    Mar 19, 2012 at 16:57
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    @AlanH. "Retweeting someone means you think your followers should see their tweet." If you want your followers to see everything that this second account (which you own) posts by retweeting then logically you want them to follow both accounts, maybe you should work on that. What you want (imo) devalues your first account as an avenue of influence by doing this. I imagine this is the same reason why there is no such web app out there with a feature for such a simple api call. It sounds like Twitter teams stamps on anything that appears early on. If you really want to do it, throw it in a bot.
    – phwd
    Apr 11, 2012 at 2:24
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There are tools such as TweetTwain capable of automated re-tweeting, try it.

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  • Hmm, thanks for the tip! It looks like it’s Windows-only though, which won’t cut it for me.
    – Alan H.
    Apr 4, 2012 at 21:35
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Head for If this then that. Activate your twitter channel, then create a new task with this trigger enter image description here

And select the action Post a tweet. Thats about all you need. It'll refresh the task every 15 minute

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  • If you read the question, I was not looking for the old style manual re-tweet that is really just quoting someone. While ifttt is cool, it does not (yet) support native re-tweeting.
    – Alan H.
    Apr 10, 2012 at 18:29
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Re:transtwitter appears to be built for exactly this need and contains a concise but powerful syntax to control which tweets get retweeted.

Edit to add: RoundTeam, as mentioned in other answers, also does this.

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  • "Due to some technical maintenance RTT is currently unavailable"
    – Harry Wood
    Jan 21, 2016 at 23:54
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You can set it up manually using a Google Apps Script, Yahoo Pipes and the service TwitterFeed.

These are the steps:

  1. create a Twitter application at https://dev.twitter.com/apps and note your consumer key and consumer secret
  2. create a Google Apps Script that fetches tweets via the Twitter API and makes them available as RSS. Click here to create a copy of the script I am using. Fill in your consumer key and secret on lines 14 and 15
  3. create a Yahoo Pipe that fetches the RSS feed, removes retweets and converts the remaining tweets to retweets. Use this one, fill in the URL from your Google Apps Script and generate a RSS feed from it
  4. sign up to TwitterFeed and feed (pun intended) the RSS feed from the previous step into your Twitter account

Voila!

Find more details in a blog entry I wrote about it: http://www.krautcomputing.com/blog/2013/11/19/how-to-set-up-automatic-retweeting-using-a-google-apps-script-yahoo-pipes-and-twitterfeed/

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  • Your blog is down. You should copy the relevant parts of the post here to avoid just spamming your link
    – Eight Days of Malaise
    Nov 19, 2013 at 23:21
  • Check your blog.
    – phwd
    Nov 20, 2013 at 3:04

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