COMMENTS
Yes, Guy is highly connected, authoritative. But you have to agree that most of hist Twitter posts are actually promoting his Alltop service...
What about creating a way to grade users on location not matching their generic grade, but on how they interact with people around their location?
DocHobbes: Not sure exactly what you mean. We do show power users within a given location. Perhaps you're suggesting a separate grade given within a location? Or, basing something on tweets to others in that location?
I'm sorry, I don't get it: how can a guy like @Dennis_Kucinich follow only 2 people (one of whom is his wife), have 628 followers and only a mere 28 updates have a score of 98.5 (up from this afternoon, when I last checked) when I have 208/207 and 4,165 updates with a grade of only 95 -- *and* I am engaged with and in conversations with my followers/friends?
I looked at some of Kucinich's followers: some with 8 updates, some with 5, another with 10, one more with 13... one guy had 125 updates with about a dozen followers, following about 2 dozen... and few of them over 25 followers! How strong is that network?
I'm sorry, it still doesn't make sense; something is still very wrong in the state of Denmark. You're weighing the ratio far too much, if you're touting the engagement idea. Looks to me as if *engagement* has nothing to do with it at all...
Count me as still skeptical.
Will: Currently, the "engagement" factor is in alpha and only being applied to a limited number of users.
Figuring out the engagement score if resource intensive and I don't have it optimized enough to run it on all users -- yet. Stay tuned, I just need a day or two more.
is there not a way to make the badge reflect the grade more accurately. mine shows 99, but i'm actually 98 point something.
Arthur: Yes, I can do this. I need to make the image a bit bigger (or the font smaller). Will add it to the list of future updates.
Dharmesh - It would probably have to be a second grade. For example, how active am I in the twitter community, but also how active am I with my local community. How many people in my local community do I follow / interact with? Does that make sense?
Valiant attempts here with ranking the top birds, but I would have to say there's a long way to go yet with the algorithm. That's not to be negative, just a nod towards needing more weight on tweeting
quality rather than flock volume (activity), regardless of what the numbers are in the follower:following ratio.
For example, bird X could be following 10 other birds and followed by 5,000 bird X wannabes. Even if bird X never sleeps and holds continuous tweet fests 24/7 to followers and non-followers alike, it means nothing if dialog is a lot of...
birdX My cat just farted. birdZ @birdX OH. MY. GAWD! birdD @birdX LOL!! ...and the like. That might sound like pre-teen banter, but even PR pros can be just as futile in long stretches (who isn't?), and tweets like that only add to the Twitter carbon dioxide calculations (
Yo!).
I know it would be near impossible to do (until Google buys Twitter and adds there own wizardry to things --
heh) but the rankings do need some kind of quality factor; maybe a following:tweet-quality ratio? The challenge, of course, is agreeing on what makes a quality tweet (undoubtedly subjective).
To my mind, a quality tweet is one that points me to something I didn't already know but have interest in -- principally for professional interest (work, research, etc). Presumably I've done the footwork to this point and fly with a flock of birds that have common interests; so all I do now is look for that link or factoid that gives me something I didn't have one tweet earlier. Those kinds of tweets are, to me, high quality tweets and what I give credit for to other birds if I see them. There might be other classifications of quality (e.g., emotional, entertainment...), and so maybe different quality algorithms are needed (i.e., multiple rank types, not just a single "100 top birds"), but one way or the other the rankings somehow need a volume-of-quality-tweets weighting.
We need metrics of some kind, and I think Twitter Grader is a lot of fun. I have a respectable grade of 84. So I think the best use of Twitter Grader is to tell part of the story (as with all quantitative measurement tools). Alone, it can't really reveal how well someone may represent him/herself, a brand, a point of view, etc. on Twitter.<p>The quality of the Tweets is more important that the quantity. More than 2 tweets a day is excessive, in my book, and posting a tweet that would not be of general interest to your followers is self-indulgent (who cares if you're stuck in an airport or if you like a certain brand of toothpaste? -- real tweets from people I stopped following).<p>An occasional personal update makes you a real person and engenders trust; constant personal updates make you look like a raving egotist!</p><p>I follow people who post useful and relevant links and announcements.</p> I can't understand why people don't use DMs or even email to carry on some conversations that obviously don't need to be
broadcast to their followers. That's why I follow relatively few people, and I had to drop a few.<p>It's funny, I see this kind of competitiveness about rank and
elite among certain social media marketers (thank goodness, not all of them), and it just provokes a lot of eye-rolling. Reminds me of certain bloggers who are all about their Technorati ranking. Makes me think, get a life! Because, bottom line, who really cares what your Twitter grade is? If you're a nonprofit org. and you've connected with one person and helped them make a choice that improved their quality of life, or you're a business and you've established an online presence that brought in sales that quarter, that's impact.</p>
That said, please follow me @FletcherPrince ;) Sorry, couldn't resist :)
Mary Fletcher Jones said: "Because, bottom line, who really cares what your Twitter grade is? If you're a nonprofit org. and you've connected with one person and helped them make a choice that improved their quality of life, or you're a business and you've established an online presence that brought in sales that quarter, that's impact."
EXACTLY!
And I think that's a relatively new perspective (circa 2008) of how to use Twitter. I'm a spanking new bird and that's how I see Twitter being worth my time (though I'm only human and might fall from grace occasionally). It will be interesting to see if early adopters --
birdX I'm standing in in line for a latte at SB. -- will influence new users in bad ways or if intelligent 'How to...with Twitter' articles will turn tides towards economy and value.
At any rate, Twitter Grader is indeed curious and the near future will probably see some impressive new Twitter measurement tools come out.
Oh, and you've got to follow me @Wion for rare but earth-shattering intelligence. heh!
Poop. Italics are wonky in that post. Only italicized text should be "birdX I'm standing in in line for a latte at SB." and "heh!" at the very end.
A nice community like HubSpot should have previewable comments for self-editing blunders, no?
Shutting up now.
Thanks for listening to my ONE complaint about Twitter grading systems, the higher valuation of those who follow the fewest number of their followers (0-10% of followers). I realize that high profile Twitter users can't really follow & respond to thousands of followers' Tweets but at least tey are receiving them and they usually respond to some of them. Having tens of thousands of followers and following less than 100 people just turns a person's Tweetstream into a broadcast, all out-going Tweets and no conversation between users.
IMO, a social community is not about each individual posting their personal diary for everyone to read but about interaction and communication between users on both weighty and lighthearted issues.
I'm sure you'll get a lot of feedback on these changes and it is odd to see some people with the largest followings farther down on the list than you normally see them. But I think occasional tweaking of your grading formula promotes a healthy discussion of how we value our online relationships and measure each individual's contribution to the communal discussion (very difficult elements to quantify).
Glad to hear that engagement is going to become a relevant factor. What, exactly, is going to count as engagement? @replies? retweets?
Also, how much focus is being put on changes that benefit users looking for small communities, rather than the Elite crowd?
At twidentify.com, we chose retweets as the leading measure of influence, as it works best within the context of specific searches. For instance, if a user wants to find other user experience professionals, it's a topic that has a small community but retweets still stand out as being relevant, in or out of the UX community.
Would be good to see grader focus more on user goals and small communities too. It's something we'd like to include in Twidentify.
Cheers!
This is all very interesting. I really admire Twitter, so simple, yet so effective. Not sure what my grade is but Twitter is definitely a great way to
build online branding.
Interesting, although I think this will eventually be disregarded or gamed the same as Alexia, Digg votes, and any other social media ranking is. All the SEO freaks figure this stuff out pretty quick and start to game it so that the rankings are always a little biased.