How quickly do you retweet something from unknown source on Twitter?

This. I will usually retweet stuff that I may have heard through a source was going down but haven't been able to confirm yet and preface it with "Working to confirm... RT @..." or something like that.

I've also been on Twitter long enough that I've had a few situations where people took my retweet of someone else as if it was a statement of fact. So I'm careful about what I retweet. But I also will let my followers know in those instances that my retweet is not an indication that said news is true. After time, people that have followed you for a while begin to realize this. Sure, you get new followers, but that's the same as any other medium. The people who know you from experience with how you work over time know what they're getting. And retweeting stuff that could very well prove to be true is beneficial to them, particularly if they know I'm working to confirm it.

Like most things, it's a matter of discretion.

 

Good example today: Ken Rosenthal mistakenly tweeted at the outset that Heath Bell was traded to Texas, and the usual crew ran with it for about 5 minutes until Evan Grant said wait a minute, the name he got was Mike Adams.

 

That's a little different. That's on Rosenthal, not the people who RT it.

No question that Rosenthal is reliable and I'd have zero problem RT anything he reports. He just got this wrong.

Another problem with the whole twitter thing is people feeling they don't have time to spend 10 minutes checking something before reporting it, especially on a frenzied day like today.

 

Yep. Oy.

Too often I don't even recognize the "biz" anymore. But at least we're lemmings making a shitload of dimes.

 

The good thing about Twitter is anything erroneous can be corrected in the time it takes the average reporter to generate four grafs for a website.

 

I'd prefer to RT a reporter with information, and if I RT anything, I make sure it's attributed.

Though I'm hesitant to RT tweets that read "Sources indicate ..." or something along those lines.