I have a list of the most "whitelisted" users on Twitter using SocialToo. I should do a ranking of that some time - I bet it would make a lot of sense, considering it's all an anonymous vote and no one knows their ranking.
mdoeff
· 5 months ago
Have you taken a look at Mr. Tweet yet? I haven't used it much yet but it seems to factor in other factors besides popularity.
Scobleizer
· 5 months ago
Yeah, I forgot about Mr. Tweet because I like AllTop better because of its better breadth and focus on things other than just Twitterers. But yeah, Mr. Tweet is trying to resist the pure temptation to go with just a popularity-driven list. There are others on Twitter too that I see pop up in conversation from time to time, but I can't remember them at the moment.
mdoeff
· 5 months ago
This Net at Night interview with one of the guys behind Mr. Tweet is worth listening to: http://twit.tv/natn80
FredDavis
· 5 months ago
Yes, what's needed is better reputation tracking and content analysis... this is all part of a new field I'm trying to push called Friend Management.
centernetworks
· 5 months ago
ive said all along - ask users for 3 simple interests - match them randomly to 3 other people who have those interests - perhaps even in the same geographic area.
it's great to see barack and justine sitting next to you for example on ff's default list - neither participates - and frankly most of that list doesn't participate - - im going to do a post about this tonight.
as i noted in the ff thread, it seems ff is moving in the same direction as twitter. ff's list is really no better.
Daniel J. Pritchett
· 5 months ago
I notice you've got FF comments synced up with your Disqus stream Robert. Are you using the built-in FF sync from Disqus or a 3rd party tool like ff2disqus? I could never get the former to work...
Scobleizer
· 5 months ago
Daniel: I'm just using the built-in FF sync from Disqus.
Louis Gray
· 5 months ago
Robert, one thing to note is that the list is not terrible. Some of us (you and me, for instance) have worked hard to try and deliver value to the community. I was a lot less visible prior to FriendFeed, and I don't believe they put me on the list as a favor, but that this occurred organically.
That said, I do try to highlight 10 FriendFeed users each month who are delivering real value. You can see those posts here:
Lists are tough, when Nielsen came out with their mom list the first thing that happened was "why isn't ____ on there". And then there was the "but ____ is such a ____"
My experience is that lists are polarizing.
Looking for someone to follow on twitter? Uh, I follow 3600 people who add value, pick any one of them. Friendfeed? I'm still figuring it out.
Scoble you did a great job of stating the problem but instead of waiting on Friendfeed couldn't we try to solve this problem ourselves? What if the community collectively begin suggesting users that others should consider following?
Louis Gray has done a great job of this with his monthly series and today I saw a Friendfeed Challenge post that encouraged others to blog their own recommendations. I say we need to encourage this and then centrally gather the recommendations.
How about using a Friendfeed group solely for this purpose? Can we get the Friendfeed Follower Room off and running? Check it out here http://friendfeed.com/friendfeedfollow
Douglas Karr
· 5 months ago
I'm not sure why all of these tools are trying to force irrelevant connections. The power of social networking is that connections naturally happen. Those are powerful, relevant connections based on trust and relationships, not popularity or algorithms.
Johni Fisher
· 5 months ago
Hi Robert ,, just to let you know that the comments counter is slow :-) All the posts today are great Regards
Karoli
· 5 months ago
Amen, Robert. Algorithms can be and are gamed, too. The whole idea of recommendations just bugs me. There has to be a better way to discover. Keywords? Maybe, but spam could be a problem. Flickr invites people to post photos to "the world through my eyes" group, where other Flickr members can discover and comment while posting their own. That's been fairly effective but I think it could be better.
Twitter's recommendations are a complete joke because they're all celebrity-based, hand-picked, and have no relevance to people that aren't starstruck idiots. As you say, it creates false celebrity in some cases and just reinforces the idiotic celebrity we have already. Moreover, it misses the point completely.
Facebook User
· 5 months ago
OK - so most of us agree the popularity driven list is bad. What would be a good idea to help neophytes? I just started http://XeeSM.com today a social site manager and we will soon have a similar challenge. Any suggestions?
ianbetteridge
· 5 months ago
"So, why do I call these lists 'anti-community?' Because it creates jealousy/envy and division between those who are on the list and those who are not."
It only creates jealousy in people who want to be at the top of such lists, though. And if what matters to someone is being "most popular", then they're not really there for community in the first place - they're there to promote themselves.
So really, the people who get annoyed at not being on such lists tend to be the kind of people who aren't going to contribute much to real communities anyway. I don't think guys like yourself or Louis, for example, would really care whether you're on them or not.
Dave
· 5 months ago
"I don't think guys like yourself or Louis, for example, would really care whether you're on them or not."
I'm guessing you've not been reading Scoble for very long.
ianbetteridge
· 5 months ago
Oh, about seven years. Perhaps I know him better than you.
Rogers Cadenhead
· 5 months ago
Regarding your complaint about gaming these systems, isn't that exactly what you've done by following more than 102,000 people on Twitter?
It's not even remotely possible for you to follow the updates of that many people. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. If everyone on your list made just one Twitter update a day, you'd have less than a second to devote to each.
The only reason to follow that many is to increase your own follower count.
Scobleizer
· 5 months ago
Rogers: not true. I only autofollow everyone so that they can send me DMs. I use FriendFeed to follow other people closely and I do watch my Twitter friends randomly so that I can see patterns that you can't.
Rogers Cadenhead
· 5 months ago
To each his own, but how can the ability to get DMs from people you don't know be more beneficial than the primary use case for Twitter -- the ability to get real-time updates from people you are legitimately interested in?
Your occasional toe dip into that 102,000-user torrent is not going to show you anything that you couldn't get from random Twitter updates. And you're undoubtedly getting an unbelievable amount of auto-generated junk from people you follow who are just bots gaming Twitter.
To my thinking, building ridiculously enormous friend counts on social media sites is "anti-community." Twitter's follower count is a terrible metric that just encourages gamesmanship and discourages real relationships. It should be counting how many people have taken action -- retweets, DMs, and the like -- not followers. Otherwise, it's just another way to play a game of mine's bigger, just like the TechMeme LeaderBoard, Share Your OPML, Technorati Leaderboard, and so on.
Scobleizer
· 5 months ago
I'm interested in early adopters and people who are fanatical about the tech space. And anyone who is following me is defacto in both of those. If not, why follow me? And I totally disagree that my group of friends isn't different from random Twitter updates. Totally not true. But to tell you the truth I've moved most of my reading behavior over to FriendFeed where I can separate people out into lists and build much better searches that are resistant to jerks and spam. I agree with you about the follower count. It should be harder to find and see and compare. If not impossible. It's all lies anyway thanks to the SUL. Mashable and Techcrunch, for instance, had fewer followers than I did before getting on the list, now has way more.
When someone is new to a service, why don't they just "discover" by following a few people they already know, and then following the friends of those people? That's how you see new people you might have something in common with.
Twitter's SUL is irrelevant to me, because I'm damned if I am going to waste my time following Britney or Oprah. I'm here to learn and grow.
But I guess everyone should be first asked to answer the question, "why am I here?" If you're here, or anywhere, for marketing purposes, you're looking for a customer. If you're here to learn, you're looking for the experts in your discipline or field. If you're here to learn something new, you follow the experts in the field you want to learn about. If you are here to keep current on an issue, you follow the people interested in the issue. Maybe we shouldn't all keep the same followers all the time.
That, by the way, is why AllTop is good. It separates people easily into categories.
jer979
· 5 months ago
So, this is less about this particular post than your general return to blogging.
Welcome back and thank God!
I'm glad to see you going back to your roots and I think Dave Winer is right.
You are providing context and insight that you can't do on Twitter, which I use and love. Though, as I said at the #140conf, I couldn't follow you there, too many tweets, but I devour your blog.
So, take it from one Raving Fan...more blogging is better (maybe 1-2 posts/day ;-)
All Comments
it's great to see barack and justine sitting next to you for example on ff's default list - neither participates - and frankly most of that list doesn't participate - - im going to do a post about this tonight.
as i noted in the ff thread, it seems ff is moving in the same direction as twitter. ff's list is really no better.
That said, I do try to highlight 10 FriendFeed users each month who are delivering real value. You can see those posts here:
http://friendfeed.com/search?q=intitle:(10+peop...
My experience is that lists are polarizing.
Looking for someone to follow on twitter? Uh, I follow 3600 people who add value, pick any one of them. Friendfeed? I'm still figuring it out.
Louis Gray has done a great job of this with his monthly series and today I saw a Friendfeed Challenge post that encouraged others to blog their own recommendations. I say we need to encourage this and then centrally gather the recommendations.
How about using a Friendfeed group solely for this purpose? Can we get the Friendfeed Follower Room off and running? Check it out here http://friendfeed.com/friendfeedfollow
All the posts today are great Regards
Twitter's recommendations are a complete joke because they're all celebrity-based, hand-picked, and have no relevance to people that aren't starstruck idiots. As you say, it creates false celebrity in some cases and just reinforces the idiotic celebrity we have already. Moreover, it misses the point completely.
It only creates jealousy in people who want to be at the top of such lists, though. And if what matters to someone is being "most popular", then they're not really there for community in the first place - they're there to promote themselves.
So really, the people who get annoyed at not being on such lists tend to be the kind of people who aren't going to contribute much to real communities anyway. I don't think guys like yourself or Louis, for example, would really care whether you're on them or not.
I'm guessing you've not been reading Scoble for very long.
It's not even remotely possible for you to follow the updates of that many people. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. If everyone on your list made just one Twitter update a day, you'd have less than a second to devote to each.
The only reason to follow that many is to increase your own follower count.
Your occasional toe dip into that 102,000-user torrent is not going to show you anything that you couldn't get from random Twitter updates. And you're undoubtedly getting an unbelievable amount of auto-generated junk from people you follow who are just bots gaming Twitter.
To my thinking, building ridiculously enormous friend counts on social media sites is "anti-community." Twitter's follower count is a terrible metric that just encourages gamesmanship and discourages real relationships. It should be counting how many people have taken action -- retweets, DMs, and the like -- not followers. Otherwise, it's just another way to play a game of mine's bigger, just like the TechMeme LeaderBoard, Share Your OPML, Technorati Leaderboard, and so on.
Twitter's SUL is irrelevant to me, because I'm damned if I am going to waste my time following Britney or Oprah. I'm here to learn and grow.
But I guess everyone should be first asked to answer the question, "why am I here?" If you're here, or anywhere, for marketing purposes, you're looking for a customer. If you're here to learn, you're looking for the experts in your discipline or field. If you're here to learn something new, you follow the experts in the field you want to learn about. If you are here to keep current on an issue, you follow the people interested in the issue. Maybe we shouldn't all keep the same followers all the time.
That, by the way, is why AllTop is good. It separates people easily into categories.
Welcome back and thank God!
I'm glad to see you going back to your roots and I think Dave Winer is right.
Not to be too self-promoting, but I did say that "Bloggers will rule the earth" in this post: http://jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/blogg...
You are providing context and insight that you can't do on Twitter, which I use and love. Though, as I said at the #140conf, I couldn't follow you there, too many tweets, but I devour your blog.
So, take it from one Raving Fan...more blogging is better (maybe 1-2 posts/day ;-)