Musing and Gadgets

If you are a user of Twitter, you are probably aware of the Twitter suggested user list. For many hardcore users, especially the early adopters it has always been a controversial topic. Those who were against the list said it provided a unfair advantage to those who were on it, inflating their numbers. Today Twitter released their new suggested user lists, replacing their older single list model.

You can find the new lists under Twitter, find people, browse suggestion. There is now multiple suggested list, divided by interest. According to the Twitter blog they used several algorithms to create the various lists. Who is on the lists and where they rank will change frequently based on those algorithms. Since the algorithms has not been released, we can only guess what it is based upon. I did noticed that refreshing the page changes who is on the list and how they are ranked. So I suspect some of the criteria include how often a person or organization tweets are retweeted, how often they are hashtagged and how many people @ them on a relevant topic to that interest. Not surprisingly these algorithms appear to be updating the various list in almost real time. I suspect once someone cracks the algorithms that Twitter uses to create these list, people will try to use this knowledge to move higher on their list of interest. I also noticed that the one category that doesn't have a list is that of social media, I am wondering if that is because that is the area where ranking is most important and therefore most likely to try to game the system.

These lists are really made for people who are new to Twitter, to give them a place to start. If you are a twitter veteran, then you will probably find the user created list on Listorous more valuable and useful. What do you think of the new Twitter lists, is it of value to you or not. Please let me know.

Posted via web from kimsdreamsandthoughts.com