DISQUS

SamW · 8 months ago

Really good idea. Will be cool to keep an eye on my tweetrank!

Tim · 8 months ago

Spot on, tweefind is a great idea in theory but is open to abuse. If users can "spam" their way to having 10,000+ followers they can cheat the system, creating a network of users who RT each other with the aim of pushing up their ranks, and controlling the "influential" information on the page.

Complicated stuff..!

Andrew · 8 months ago

Doesn't work for now... i search for something and only got results for today and i'm sure there were some really relevant tweets about it some days ago.

@mashable: you broke the comments box, i can only comment if i click reply to an already posted comment

Andrew · 8 months ago

It doesn't work well for now. I searched for some things and it only showed today's results while I am sure there were some much more relevant tweets in the past.

Sebastien · 8 months ago

Good idea, would like to see how it develops over time. Search results are ok, but as mentioned does the number of followers mean you are more relevant than anyone else....

Kevin Montgomery · 8 months ago

Sebastiien,
Yes, good point. "Relevance" is all relevant! Ha Kevin

SeoOptimizer Submission Tool · 8 months ago

Tweefind I like

Stuart Flatt · 8 months ago

In theory a great idea, but agree with other comments, what defines a good link that pushes it to the top? Just because someone is new, or decides not to shout about themselves does not mean they do not have good content to share.

I would guess most people use twitter search (including myself) because of the real time updates, maybe that should be a major factor?

Also how does it work out keywords? I assume if you shorten a url it cannot pick up the original?

Not to mention we will all forget the name in the week and go back to twitter search and google :)

Infonote · 8 months ago

It would have been better if they used re-tweeting as a measure instead of followers.

luca filigheddu · 8 months ago

# of retweets has an important weight within the algorithm ;-)

wecandobiz · 8 months ago

In my mind the concept of search as we know is becoming increasingly redundant as a solution to most people needs. It has always amused me that Google has got as big as it has given the utter irrelevance of most of what it returns. Who needs 292m pages for a query when one good one would do. And this is where the power of Twitter is. Want to know something? Tweet the question and get real-time answers back. I'd do that first every time rather than just take the same old Web 1.0 search metaphor and sift through historical Twitter pages instead of the web as a whole.

Tweetfind is missing a trick. I'd like to see it offering a better way to ask and organise answers to real-time questions.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

luca filigheddu · 8 months ago

Hi guys,
thanks for the review. The parameters used to calculate the rank (many more than those mentioned above) are all weighed properly. Take into account that the algorithm has been working in production for the past 72 hours, but it takes time to become more accurate.
A tip: #of followers has a very low weigh ;-)

Tips, suggestions and critics are more than welcome!

Thanks,

Luca
http://www.tweefind.com
http://www.lucafiligheddu.com

Anand · 8 months ago

"Are Twitter users with more followers, tweets, replies or retweets more relevant in the context of real time one-to-many conversations?"

Similar questions can be posed to Google as well - Are webpages with more inbound links more valuable than those with lesser links. And Google has answered it as well with constant tweakings; keeping an eye on the rate of inbound links growth,etc.

I guess Tweefind will also tweak results in a similar manner. Who knows if Twitter does indeed become truly revolutionary (God forbid), then we might be talking of Twitter Search Optimization in the same vein as SEO, though it is a bit far fetched..

wchingya · 8 months ago

In order for a Twitter Search app to be as a relevant search engine like Google, it requires time,well managed data-sorting & a much developed advance search options to fulfilling the needs. Since there're only 140 characters in it, unless the user knows exactly what he/she is looking for, otherwise it may be a time-consuming ride. I like to treat Twitter as a sidekick in getting extra search results from other tweeterers. Sometimes even the 'hottest' results may not be the one you need. Plus, the twitter rankings, is way too subjective considering some of the reasons mentioned by the previous commenters, such as celebrities etc. It's hard to be fair and square. Perhaps a little more tweaking is needed.


@wchingya
Social Media/Blogging

Jared O'Toole · 8 months ago

Cool stuff I'll have to check it out. I do wonder how rank is calculated though. Probably should focus on @ replies because you don't want a spammer who has 50k followers ranking high. Should be people who are highly engaged in the community.

luca filigheddu · 8 months ago

Most spammers have a followers/following ratio very close to 1, usually in the range 0.8-1. This helps to improve the algorithm.

Hayes Davis · 8 months ago

This is going to be very difficult to implement against the Twitter API and keep the index up to date. It does, however, sound like a good start to providing some additional context to Twitter search. I'm glad to see that Luca says that follower counts don't count too high in his algorithm. I think it's best here to stick to dynamic metrics like replies and retweets. This is more strongly analogous to page rank. It would be good to build a user's reputation over time based on these metrics as opposed to assuming that follower count directly equals influence.

@hayesdavis

luca filigheddu · 8 months ago

You can have a very high "tweerank" just having 1000 followers. Moreover, it's the followers/following ratio which is taken into account. As replied to another comment above, spammers usually have that number < 1.

Flavorbank · 8 months ago

Your proposition is compelling. The notion of "conversation" is an interesting one and offers a crystal ball for a response to your query. What happens when, at a dinner party, everyone has one similar comment on the conversation with out any additional " builds" or "ideas". What about when each guest insists on sharing/repeating the common idea shared by many?

Daniel Tunkelang · 8 months ago

I'd be curious to see how it compares to TunkRank, both in theory and in practice.

http://tunkrank.com/

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/13/a-twitter...

James Ostheimer · 8 months ago

Google's ranking system is a mix of an IR (Information Retrieval) ranking on the similarity of the search term to the content and page rank. The problem here as I see it is 140 characters means that IR score is not very illuminating, so we get back tons of results with say 1 word matching b/t the search term and the tweet. Once we realize this, then we see that the scoring algorithm for "popular" twitter users becomes the driving force behind pushing tweets up or down.

That is all fine, but the fact that the content is so thin, means that flipping results up and down based on a users aggregate behavior TELLS US NOTHING ABOUT THE GOODNESS/BADNESS of the tweet in question. So we get in the situation where a bad tweet by a good author gets promoted, and the results are not very good. My $0.02.

SEO'Brien · 8 months ago

Great idea but agree with your concern regarding their flaw; no, followers or tweet/retweets are not a sufficient indication of rank. Simply considering the saturation of twitter amongst the public, one has to recognize that it is still tilted by internet personalities and marketers biasing the result set.

Allen Weiss · 8 months ago

This is a bogus attempt at replicating Google. Google has had to do a Google dance by changing the algorithm to keep people who game the system at bay. They also have a lot more variables to play with. Using number of followers, etc, should produce results that (if this holds) means that people will find results based on a few people's preferences (those who have a lot of followers, retweets, etc, which are all highly correlated). So much for democracy in social media (note: Google never tried to be democratic)

Phil Scott · 8 months ago

Am not sure if Tweefind does any better than Twitter search (search.twitter.com). In fact, Twitter is all about real-time results and therefore it makes sense to follow the latest tweet more than the tweet from a popular person. I agree that Twitter has tons of useful information and I believe the only company that has tapped in to this information and created value is http://www.boilingpage.com that shows the hottest pages on the web based on how popular they are in the Twitter. It's so addicting, I just love that site.

CJ · 8 months ago

Have you looked at the current discussion around TunkRank "A Twitter Analog to PageRank" ? - the API has been released by Jason Adams.

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/04/04/api-for-t...

keithaw2k · 8 months ago

Well it might be more useful in some areas than others. For the searches I made I might just as well have said "Find me the spammiest adverts you can for this keyword" Try putting in hypnotherapist and see the results. Some way to go methinks.

Twitteidoo · 8 months ago

As always U R on top of things, will include this is my Twible

Alcino PINHEIRO · 7 months ago

I wonder if such a tool will be great to find TRADING partners wwide

Janet Edin · 7 months ago

A Quick note - outstanding content ! Thanks!