Tweeterboard: Who Does That Person on Twitter Think They Are?
Like it or not, there's a whole lot of conversation going on via microblogging service Twitter these days and it cannot be ignored.
Let's say you've subscribed to a search feed for your company's name (via Terraminds) and you've found someone talking smack about your employer, Perfect Angel Inc. What do you do? Well, one thing you might find useful is the new service Tweeterboard.
On Tweeterboard you'll find not only a list of the top 100 most influential users on Twitter - you can also look up any of almost 2000 users and see who they are conversing with and get some idea how much influence they carry in the Twitter ecosystem. Only a small portion of Twitter users are being tracked so far - but if indexing can be automated (!) then this could become a very important service. Admittedly, it's a much thornier question to ask how Perfect Angel Inc. should engage with a hater on Twitter even after they know something about them - but Twitterboard can be a helpful first step. The service may look like just another monument to elitism, but in fact it will tell you a lot of interesting information about many people you'll encounter on Twitter.
Jeremiah Owyang, blogger turned analyst at Forrester, says "Finally, a Twitter measurement tool that works" and the site is certainly useful and interesting in a variety of ways if nothing else. Are you a Twitter doubter? See another analyst, James Governor, who writes "If Markets are Conversations, Then Twitter is Money." Realize, too, that Twitter was co-founded by Evan Williams, the man who co-founded Blogger.com - so he's got a track record of building simple winners.
Methodology
Your influence is determined by the influence of people who talk about you publicly, apparently, though it's not completely clear. 
Tweeterboard tracks who replies publicly to a given user using the @ symbol and their user name, and who they reply to as well. It then uses a secret algorithm to assign a number of points. Generally speaking, it appears to work like the premise of Google - value is conferred to you through links from people who have had high value conferred to them by links from people who have...
Joi Ito is currently #1 on the list, yours truly is #22 and Tracy Apps, a nerdly drummer artist mom in Milwaukee, WI is currently #100 on the list. The leaderboard is changing a lot right now though; presumably time and algorithm adjustments will slow that change down a little bit at least.
While you can look at the number of followers and friends a person has on Twitter to get some idea of how much weight they carry, that's only good for so much. So is a black-box algorithm, but there's a variety of data available on Tweeterboard beyond simple ranking and points.
I'll be adding this one to my Twitter tool-set, along with the following other services I find useful and/or particularly interesting. I'll bet you've got some of your own, too.
- Hashtags.org - start a campaign by using an agreed upon subject tag.
- TwitterWhere - get a feed of all Tweets from users within a given geographic area.
- TwitterCal - add events to your Google Cal via Twitter, very handy for quick scheduling.
- 3rd Party Publishing Apps - see our survey and review of the most popular options.
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I'd be careful about calling them the 100 most influential people on twitter particularly since we don't know the method the site uses to calculate the rankings.
For example, Andy Carvin is influential & does engage in a lot of conversations, but the reason he gained so many "points" today is he asked asked for responses from people while he was demoing twitter to some staff from Morning Edition at NPR.
And I imagine a small group of friends who engage in a lot of @conversations could get ranked fairly high (or perhaps not - there is no way to know now).
I try to avoid @ when I can because I know not everyone will see it (though there are cases when some is only of interest to one or a few people).
I still am not sure exactly how twitter determines which @updates you see. I certainly see some for people I'm not following, but there are times when I'll look at someone's twitter page and see interesting updates/convesations I missed.
It certainly is an interesting site for studying twitter and how it is used, but there needs to be some skepticism.
Hmm, sounds like such a contest will drive that "what are you doing now" service even more into a half-heard chatroom.... :(
Steve, Andy as an example is a good one. In general I don't know that it's as obtuse as it might seem, but your point about skepticism is a good one.
John, that makes sense on face, but I'm not sure that's how it would go. I don't think there's a connection between not listening to other people and getting talked about yourself, is there? Perhaps just the opposite, in fact.
Hi Marshall,
Thanks for mentioning Twittercal, I'm glad you like it.
Hi Marshall,
Thanks for mentioning Tweeterboard. You're right that it looks at @ replies and, for now, only tracks public updates.
Generally speaking, it appears to work like the premise of Google
Yes, it's very similar to Google in that your reputation is calculated based on who talks (links) to you.
The leaderboard is changing a lot right now though; presumably time and algorithm adjustments will slow that change down a little bit at least.
Indeed. This is the third version of the reputation calculation, and it's more stable than the earlier versions but still pretty volatile. I have plans to make it more stable... hopefully that will happen early in the new year.
Steve Rhodes: I'd be careful about calling them the 100 most influential people on twitter particularly since we don't know the method the site uses to calculate the rankings.
A good point. Tweeterboard gives you just one of many possible measures of influence. But the basic idea is that conversations--who talks to you--is a better measure of influence and engagement than followers, friends, and so on. Ideally, people like Andy Carvin wouldn't be able to sustain a high reputation unless they were really engaging their followers.
Thanks for your comments Gene (and everyone)
Just for the record, Andy Carvin is totally awesome. He has done incredible work all over the world to advance new media.
jeez, i sit here in south india, on a kind of dialup usb modem that gets about 4 kiloBITS per, and a cellphone that is cdma but with limited functionability... and i am totally jealous with what you guys in the big bad first world get to use to entertain yourselves.... it ain't fair
Marshall
You're right, maybe I was a bit over zealous with the tool, and I recognize the dangers that a leaderboard could have.
I've published all that I've learned in the spirit of community.
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/19/leveling-the-playing-field-how-to-be-popular-on-twitter/
I like micro-publishing as much as the next guy, I'm not sure if I really get the utility in this service though.. and I'm a fairly active twitter user. That said, I didn't see the use for Technorati at first either..
I guess I'll be keeping an eye on this tool.
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Oops, probably should have followed up on this earlier...
Just for the record, Andy Carvin is totally awesome...
Right! I don't know Andy, I was just following through with Steve's example. So replace "Andy Carvin" with "people demoing Twitter or engaging in other activities that result in a surge of @'s".
I'm just catching up on this thread - somehow missed it while I was heading out of the holidays. Nothing like basking in some awesomeness, even if it's fleeting. :-)
When I first saw this, I was totally confused as to why I was in the top 10 but Steve's explanation makes total sense - I just happened to be doing a demo for a piece we'll be doing at NPR later this week, so I got more replies than usual. At last check, I'm down to 25th place, so I better come up with something quick before I vanish off the face of the board. We can't all be @newmediajim, I guess. :-)
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