Loic Le Meur - Latest Comments in Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Braden Kelley — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:46:29 -0000

I am not sure that we need search by authority as much as we need a Twitter Authority Directory.

# of followers if the only metric that most Twitter directories use, which makes it hard to find people that actually have something to say.

Some with 1,000 followers that only follows 50 people, interacts with lots of people, and loads of people RT what they tweet will currently rank in Twitter directories below someone with 2,000 followers that followed 3,000 people just to get to 2,000 followers that doesn't tweet anything interesting or participate in the community.

Does that make a Twitter directory based on # of followers useful?

I would say not.

Would someone please build a quality-based Twitter Directory (even just multiplying # of followers by a quality score would be a huge improvement (# of followers / # following).

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Denis Florent — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:06:16 -0000

Trying to experiment with a different way to calculate Twitter Authority :

http://www.denisflorent.fr/...

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

VeeJay Burns — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:45:40 -0000

I fully agree with Loic that the amount of information we spread out nowadays is too much. If you pick up a saturday issue of the New York Times you'll be getting more information than a person would get in his whole life say 200 years ago. Every year we see a stellar growth in information. The information poured onto us in the last five years through the internet is more than the information mankind has produced in the 5,000 years before.

No wonder we get lost along the way, and you've got a hell of a job in finding out who really does know something about the issue you're pondering. I don't have Loics reputation, so I don't count as an authority here, but I dare say Loic is wrong. He's off by miles.

In his blogpost he pleas to have a twitter search by authority, just like technorati who worked out an algorithm to define the authority of your blog. I'll walk a mile with him on this path as the algorithm to define authority by number of citations or links is much better than counting sheer numbers of followers. However...

There's a catch.

The catch is in creating an elite layer, the twitterati, the digerati, or whatever you'd like to call them. While reading Loic's blogpost, two things came to mind. First a conversation I had past New Years'Eve and a blogpost I wrote about half a year ago on the Social Web.

The New Years Eve conversation I had was a conversation with my neighbour and my Sister in Law who has recently received her PhD at the Oxford University. She graduated in the interaction between insects and how that would affect a Ecological systems or something like that. Fact is she worked at the same department as Dawekins (the Evolution theory zealot) and the discussion went into Evolutionism vs. Creationism. On both sides you have zealots and with neither you can have a normal scientific, fact based discussion. Evolutionism is the dominant philosophy in Science these days and to most people it seems like the case has been closed. Evolution has been scientifically verified, beyond doubt. Well, it isn't. I didn't see a video on YouTube to prove it (nor did I see a video on YouTube to prove Divine Creation) and if you would conduct objective, unbiased science, you would have to conclude that the evolution theory has gaps. In a scientific setting you'd count on educated minds questioning these results, but in the way it is presented to our children who do not have the cognitive skills yet to analyse results, we are brainwashing them. If you look at how the scientific scene works it explains a lot. Authority in Science comes from the number of publications you have in a major magazine. Every paper you submit is reviewed by an editor who likes it, or not, regardless of the argumentation to your findings. Let's say you write an article about how Evolution sucks, no matter if you include 100% proof, if the editor doesn't like it, you're out. Next step is the peer review. Every paper, once it has passed the editorial selection, is sent to peers, colleagues and the same selections starts over again. Let's say my findings are solid and proves the previously published research of one of my reviewers wrong, he won't like that as it will make him lose his reputation, authority or stature. Case closed. No publication.

Selection and authority in this process kill Science as it should be unbiased and objective. It isn't. I think the same would count for authority based filtering. The key issue here is in automation. Google and other search engines have worked out algorithms, as well as technorati who put auhority to blogs. No matter how much intelligence you put into these intermediates, they cannot compete with the selection capacity of the human brain. These selection mechanisms will undoubtedly produce a prevailing elite, just like in the science case above and smart, intelligent and argumented opinions to the contrary will be neglected.

This made me recall a post I made several months ago on the social web called "Power to the Community" In this blogpost I discussed how my colleague defines social webdesgin. This is way more than defining the social web. It is about desinging your websites to create emergent behaviour. In extremis this could lead to Isaac Asimov's foundation series in which he presents the Psychohistory.

The basis of psychohistory is the idea that, while the actions of a particular individual could not be foreseen, the laws of statistics could be applied to large groups of people and used to predict the general flow of future events. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: in a gas, the motion of a single molecule is very difficult to predict, but the mass action of the gas can be predicted to a high level of accuracy - known in physics as the Kinetic Theory. Asimov applied this concept to the population of the fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered in a quintillion. The character responsible for the science's creation, Hari Seldon, established two postulates:

That the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large
They should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses.
In creating automated intelligent interfaces to filter through the inprocessable amount of digital information we might just be on our way to do that...

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Pat Tanzola — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:41:18 -0000

So - might makes right? Way to undo every single social advance the Internet has made, asshole.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

VelvetBlues — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:46:35 -0000

haha. So you were to voice that started it all?! lol/

Yeh, I too am against having an authority search.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

John "Boz" Handy Bosma — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:38:17 -0000

Ho do you propose to measure reputation? Would this be a monolithic measure, or reputation as perceived by particular groupings? Loic has a great reputation with many, but this particular line of reasoning he's on probably hasn't helped with others. If you use a monolithic measure of reputation, you wouldn't be able to find or ally with those who hold similar views. If you use the so-called twithority measure, you'll do even worse because you'll exclude those whose views are likely to be different.

The experiences and perspectives of those in toprank positions tend to be very different from most people. Check out Malcolm Gladwell's latest work for some explanations as to why.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

hillary hartley — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:06:38 -0000

I totally disagree. I don't think we need "authority-based" search, but I certainly don't think your value on Twitter is proportional to the number of @-messages you send.

I unfollow people who send unnecessary @-messages, much preferring to hear people's original thoughts and not the so-called conversations. it is completely useless to send the following tweet:

@so-and-so what?

What use is that to your other followers? Twitter is not IRC, it's not a chat room, it's not IM. Have conversations, yes. But don't make that your litmus test for who's a "good tweeter."

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Brieuc-Yves Cadat-Lampe — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:24:29 -0000

Reputation versus Authority: I propose to speak from Reputation rather from Authority. Loïc's ability to influence others is not primarily based on his 7.000, 70.000 or 700.000 'followers' but on the quality and audacity of his judgment, I hope :-) So it seems to me much better not to search on www.twitority.com but rather on www.twittereputation.com ;-)

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Gerald Hensel — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:43:44 -0000

I think you are basically correct, but even though it seems to be a bit off topic...I get sick of this debate about followers and how many each of us has. I admit I haven't got a reasonable plan but we should think about whether the number of followers is a valid number to visualize the importance of a twitter user.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Nadine — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:55:34 -0000

I feel very sorry for the 7,000 odd people (or whatever number produced those 7,000 tweets) who felt compelled enough to attend LeWeb and tweet about it, and now realize that they may not be "important" enough to listen to...

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Loic Le Meur — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:40:20 -0000

You have a point Nadine, but just try reading 7000 tweets and tell me how long it took you, you will probably understand my point too

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Daiv Russell — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:02:47 -0000

Retweets DOES make sense, but as with any metric, there's an opportunity to abuse it once people see value in it. Services like Magpie pay people to retweet, and their doing so overtly. It won't take make for people to do it COvertly, once retweeting is accepted as the litmus test of authority.

- Daiv http://Twitter.com/DaivRawks

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Matthias — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:32:26 -0000

I don't see a problem. Search is a discovery tool. Why not let users sort the results in any way they want? By followers, by @replies, by retweets, by location, by language, by frequency of profile image change, by frequency of design change, by incoming links from the WWW... any data we can evaluate objectively is useful. And each of these stats can be a measure of authority for my current search.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Hilary Talbot — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:29:00 -0000

*sigh*

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Carrie Kerpen — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:56:29 -0000

Perhaps my favorite sprint guy @jgoldsborough on twitter didn't see your friend Ben. I had 100 followers when he helped me. This concept is exactly what ruins networks. If you want to sell your twitter space-- if that's the goal, then there are far better ways to do it than to think that your tweet is any more interesting to most of us than someone smart and interesting who is just starting out.

The "twitterverse" needs to get OVER itself

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Michael Markman — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:45:00 -0000

Information as pornography. No filler. No idle conversation. Just get right to the sex scenes.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Loic Le Meur — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:12:00 -0000

Friendfeed is NOT authority free. It has not been since day one by promoting the best of the day, week and month and also by promoting some users, me included, some of which are not even using it, like Mike Arrington (he just automatically posts to Twitter that posts to FF). That does not make FF a bad service, on the contrary, it is great.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

ewing2001 — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:08:00 -0000

...why is it that christmas turns [digital] sheeple always into some authority huggers ?; i hope friendfeed stays authority free. there is enuff digital garbage around which brought us recession, 9/11 planehuggers, obamahuggers and other Orwellian braindead peeps. And now they whine for false authority and closetCensorship ***again** ; [http://friendfeed.com/rooms... ]

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Nischal Shetty — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:30:16 -0000

That was one of the most satisfying replies I've ever heard! I bet this would shut Loic's mouth and ego!

Loic, you of all the people should know that nothing on the web lasts forever and that includes your twitter followers. Be careful when you ask for search by authority. It might turn out that by the time twitter implements this (they would do it only to satisfy your ego) you would not be having more than a couple of hundred followers.

P.S. Twhirl is the only reason I follow you!

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

bbbozzz - John Handy Bosma — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:34:34 -0000

Your post and many of the comments above assume that those who have more followers are in a position of thought leadership. I've seen very little evidence for that proposition. Given the technical limitations of tools like twitter, establishing the provenance of ideas is a very difficult thing. People who popularize others' ideas play a very important middleman role, but that role is not one of authority, as you seem to imply.

In summary, your suggestion would militate against subject matter authority, by skewing the network toward greater network centrality in an essentially content-free way. I would encourage you to think about how this kind of feature can be counter-balanced so those who are less-linked can have their voices heard. This is especially needed in cases where authority matters.

Really, people ought to focus less on connectedness of central figures than on connectedness of those at the periphery. Unless you think the most-linked and most-read really are expert in just about everything, and others' voices shouldn't be heard.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Colin Henderson — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:25:37 -0000

The use of the word "authority" by people here when speaking of followers is flawed. Authority suggests that someone has some intelligent perspective. Following in twitter or friendfeed is at best a misunderstood and at worst an unknown behaviour. Fair enough to sneak these features in, but lets not kid ourselves about what it means. Social tools remain the least understood tools and adding features is great but lets not misrepresent.

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Jorge Martinez — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 02:27:52 -0000

Number of followers isn't the best way to define who is an "authority" in his/her niche. I would suggest a rating system of some kind that is independent of the number of followers. I don't trust those numbers anyways. Lots of time, they are artificial. Rating someone based on the kind of content they produce would be useful. Add a rating system then incorporate that to search.

http://twitter.com/pixelbug

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Sachin Balagopalan — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:18:52 -0000

I think it’s more of a technical issue than a design problem … http://bit.ly/XCUT

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Eric Rice — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:53:47 -0000

There are far more McDonald's in the world than small French bistros. Quantity better than quality? Sorry, Loic, big numbers make us dumb and slow. Although, that *is* the American Way. :)

Re: Twitter: We Need Search By Authority

Sarah — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:47:56 -0000

Will you all ever get tired of hearing yourselves talk, tweet, blog etc?

If I read this right, now you want to be able to weed out the noise...? What if you are the noise?

Just sayin'