Twitter lets you add comments to your retweets

Twitter users can now add their thoughts to a retweet, after the social media site rolled out new functionality.

Previously, people using the social network couldn't pass comment if they wanted to retweet others' tweets to their own followers.

But the latest upgrade from Twitter, called "quote tweet", now allows users to attach their own comments to a retweet.

It makes it easier for people to throw their own two cents worth in on others' thoughts, replacing a clumsy manual process in which they had to use the phrase RT' (retweet) as a divider to distinguish their comment from the retweeted comment.

Twitter is rolling out the new feature to iOS and web browsers, adding that it's coming soon to Android, with no firm date in mind just yet.

While the character limit falls to 116 rather than the usual 140 when quoting tweets, it's still far more than the usual handful of characters left over when performing a manual retweet.

This manual process has led to people using the initialism MT (modified tweet) as a way of explaining that they've edited the original tweet to make room for their own comments.

The update comes two months after Twitter introduced the ability to send private messages to groups of people.

Twitter profiles had to follow one another to send a private message before the January update, which allowed one person to send a private message to a group of people, who didn't need to follow each other.

The person sending the message doesn't need to follow the recipient of the message anymore, either.

The update was seen as an attempt to combat Facebook's group messaging ability.