Twitter, the wildly popular microblogging service, has spawned Yet Another Tech Acronym. I know, I know, YATA YATA YATA.

Stay with me. RT is to FWD as 2008 is to 1998, except on a larger stage. The Internet has grown a tad since the late 90s, after all. Just as your mom might once have forwarded you a link to the Hamsterdance, now she may RT a link to her a dynamite turkey gravy recipe. (I say ‘your’ mom because I’m still working on getting mine to read my work online instead of printing it out.)

In of itself, the addition of retweet to the list of online conventions spawned by Twitter might not inspire an avalanche of commentary.

Many netizens already simply refer to one another with “@username,” dropping a domain name, surnames and other non-essential clutter. Usage usually drives meaning in language. When you have only 140 characters to work in, however, concision drives usage.

Similarly, if you “@username” someone on a discussion board or comment section on a blog, you’re replying specifically to them. Websites that chronicle and translate the lingo on Twitter are springing up everywhere, like the Twitter Glossary, Twittonary and the Twictionary.

Retweet, however, is worth another look. The word garnered special mention over the past weekend by some of the most influential social media pundits around in the blogosphere, including Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang, who posted Retweet: The Infectious Power of the Word Of Mouth, and Shel Israel, who wrote that ‘retweeting is the most powerful single aspect of Twitter.’

So what is it?

To retweet is to repost the tweet of another Twitter user using your own account.

Most users shorten “retweet” to RT and add it at the beginning of the tweet. RT is followed by the @username of the user being retweeted and then the body of the tweet, including links.

A tweet, if you missed it, is the tongue-in-beak name for a single post to your microblog.

Why is RT important? If you’re trying to understand social media, influence marketing and Internet culture, go back and read those posts from Shel and Jeremiah.

When you RT someone’s message, you’re endorsing the idea, link, question or answer to your network of subscribers, along with anyone monitoring Twitter for hashtags or brands that you might mention. They in turn can RT your message, quickly spreading the message globally. In a time where breaking news often shows up on Twitter hours before it hits the broadcast networks, the power of the RT is substantial.

Intellectual property law and editorial standards around the retweet are, like the term itself, still to be defined. Should you add in your own comments and, if so, how? [Brackets, for example. -Ed.]

Should you always attribute the original tweet or only the most recent retweeter?

If a Twitter account has a dollar value or is a corporate entitity, should there be affiliate advertising dollars if your users click on a link?

Should enterprise microblogging platforms have an automatic RT function?

Some answers are already cropping up in the blogosphere. For instance:

• Mike Templeton was thinking about similar issues when he asked ‘Is there a format for retweeting?‘ on Microblink.

• AJ Vaynerchuk described the art and science of retweeting for Twitteraholics.

• David Risley wondered whether assigning a dollar value to a twitter account is just wrong.

As I’ve written before, every age has its own language and lingo that reflects the industry and conventions of the time. The information economy is no exception. The Internet has spawned any number of subdialects, as l33tspeak, marketing, PR spin, consulting boilerplate and engineering shorthand, blending together into a global conversation.

Increasingly, we’re being asked to translate language like “OMG! Did you see that comment from a spambot on your blog? LMAO. Stop tweeting and mod the trolls!” into something that approaches normal language. If you need a handy reference, BTW, make sure to bookmark and use our list of chat, text messaging and IM abbrevations.

Grammarians may be dismayed at the neologisms being spawned but usually end up accepting ‘cyberspeak’ like blog, podcast and wiki into general usage. Even “Meh” has been accepted into the dictionary. We’ll see if ‘retweet’ shows up soon, though I expect they’ll have to define ‘tweet’ first.

Now, go do me a favor and RT this post. In the meantime, I need to print it out for Mom to read over Thanksgiving.

This week’s buzzword is CutOutDissection.com. In case you missed the news, a 19 year old PETA intern named Jennifer Thornburg legally changed her name to CutOutDissection.com.  Here’s her driver’s license.

Now, Jennifer…er CutOut…. changed her name for an altruistic reason. She wanted to bring attention to a cause — in this case, stopping animal dissection in schools.  I can understand that.  With all the 3-D software we have available today, why not have students virtually dissect a rat or frog or pig?  I applaud Jennifer for thinking of such a clever way to focus attention on a cause she believes in.

But here’s the hitch. How long do you think it will be before someone legally changes their name to Ask.com?  (And not for altruistic reasons, either!)  In a marketing climate where you can shrink shrink wrap your car in advertising for a few extra dollars a month or tattoo the name of a casino on your forehead for $10,000, it’s only a matter of time.