Twitter introduced the “Quote Tweet” feature in 2015. The rollout began in April, allowing users to share another tweet while adding their own commentary above the embedded original post.
Before the feature was formalized, people commonly used manual formats such as “RT @username” or typed a comment followed by a link to the original tweet. Those workarounds were limited by Twitter’s 140-character system and often made it difficult to distinguish the original message from the user’s reaction.
The revamped Quote Tweet experience embedded the original post and gave the commentator room for a separate response. It made reactions, criticism, explanations, and added context easier to follow while preserving a visible connection to the source tweet.
The feature is sometimes confused with the older retweet function, which simply republishes a post without commentary. Another later development came in 2020, when Twitter added a “Quote Tweets” link so users could find posts that had quoted a particular tweet. After Twitter became X, retweets were renamed reposts, but the quoting concept remained.