Firstly, I wanted to say Happy New Year to all my readers, and to apologise for being somewhat absent over the past two weeks. I hope that you all had as enjoyable and relaxing a Christmas time as I did, and I look forward to seeing you all back here in 2009.
I have no doubt that you have by now all become aware of the ongoing debate concerning the measurement of authority on Twitter. On the one hand, the likes of Loic le Meur and Jesse Stay argue that the number of followers may be used as representative of Twitter authority in search, others including Robert Scoble suggest that this number is merely a trivial statistic, providing little indication of actual influence. As the prevalence of 'auto follow' software continues to increase, the meaning of these statistics diminish still further. Whilst there invariably exists an opportunity for an optional search feature which aggregates tweets according to the author's follower numbers, I remain dubious of the argument that such figures can accurately represent the authority of a given tweet.
Whilst I do not always agree with the comments made by Scoble, having read much of the content produced over the past few days in regards to the subject, it seems to me that there is little disputing the insignificance of follower numbers. I have argued time and time again that the value of Twitter stems from those that we choose to follow; not from those that choose to follow us. Whilst I truly hope that I offer value to each of those that follow me, the number thereof offers little value to me unless I were to attempt to profit from these numbers somehow; for example, whilst there have been suggestions that followers can provide an electronic testing ground for new ideas, the value generated offers little external benefit to the community. In fact, the value that would be created in such a situation would rest solely with the user in question.
I have no doubt that you have by now all become aware of the ongoing debate concerning the measurement of authority on Twitter. On the one hand, the likes of Loic le Meur and Jesse Stay argue that the number of followers may be used as representative of Twitter authority in search, others including Robert Scoble suggest that this number is merely a trivial statistic, providing little indication of actual influence. As the prevalence of 'auto follow' software continues to increase, the meaning of these statistics diminish still further. Whilst there invariably exists an opportunity for an optional search feature which aggregates tweets according to the author's follower numbers, I remain dubious of the argument that such figures can accurately represent the authority of a given tweet.
Whilst I do not always agree with the comments made by Scoble, having read much of the content produced over the past few days in regards to the subject, it seems to me that there is little disputing the insignificance of follower numbers. I have argued time and time again that the value of Twitter stems from those that we choose to follow; not from those that choose to follow us. Whilst I truly hope that I offer value to each of those that follow me, the number thereof offers little value to me unless I were to attempt to profit from these numbers somehow; for example, whilst there have been suggestions that followers can provide an electronic testing ground for new ideas, the value generated offers little external benefit to the community. In fact, the value that would be created in such a situation would rest solely with the user in question.
I see little to indicate that such value translates directly into authority. Although the potential for functionality such as that described is undeniable, I am lead to the assumption that offering value to follows becomes very much secondary. I find this to be a bit of a shame. If it is eventually decided that followers do represent authority, then the result will invariably be users employing increasingly dubious tactics to increase their follower count. The transparency of the conversation will drop, and the value of the platform in general will be lost.
All this conversation concerning Twitter authority seems trivial to me; yet another attempt to attach quantitative measures to something which is inherently qualitative. What are your thoughts on authority on Twitter?
All this conversation concerning Twitter authority seems trivial to me; yet another attempt to attach quantitative measures to something which is inherently qualitative. What are your thoughts on authority on Twitter?
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