Twitter just made the new retweet functionality, aka Project Retweet, available to a much larger number of Twitter users.

To check if you have it enabled, visit Twitter.com now.

So what is this new retweet functionality exactly?

Well, until now, the Twitter website doesn’t currently support a Retweet (RT) option. As of now, you have to copy the person’s tweet, append an RT @”person who tweeted”. The trouble with that is that often, the 140 character tweet has to be shortened. Plus, if there’s a RT chain… you are Retweeting a Retweet, adding all the intermediaries is a major headache.

The Retweet is so popular, that though the Twitter site does not support it, most other third-party clients do. Be it the popular TwitterFox or Tweetdeck, or any other client on mobile, browser or desktop. Even in a recent study, less than 50% actually use the website.

So now, with the new retweet feature built in, Twitter is allowing for RT support on the website itself.

So how do RT’s Work?

The moment you have the RT functionality, you’ll see this:

And here’s a new-style RT close up.

When you do a RT

This is what happens if you want to retweet using the new functionality.

Hover over a message and you see a retweet link, bottom right:

Then a confirmation appears if you click it:

You then see the message in your stream, showing you retweeted it (at the bottom):

And you can undo it if you want (bottom right):

You also get a retweets menu item in the right hand column, which shows you a screen showing what you’ve retweeted, who has retweeted you etc. There’s not much in mine as of yet!