I guess Twitter had at least two reasons, building the new retweet feature THAT way.
# 1: Traffic
Klicking the retweet button and approving it by klicking the YES button 20 px below is way faster than klicking, editing the old post, write a comment in front, perhaps shorten the whole thing again because of exceeding the 140 etc.
With the new retweet feature I can retweet very fast and very much in a short time. That means rising traffic. And traffic is what keeps Twitter alive.
# 2: Integration
By showing the retweetet person in my followers timeline there is a lot more interaction. There is a big probability, that the guy I'm retweeting is interesting for my followers.
A picture and the name of the retweetet person in bold letters are much stir causing than the Name of the retweetet twitterer after my additional words and the usual RT @ stuff. That means rising followers for the retweeted person. And twitter is all about followers.
PS: The button below is doing the usual RT @ way. Try it.
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