Thoughts on the concepts of popularity, authority and originality on Twitter

So the Twittersphere is abuzz again. This time with talks of who the people with authority on Twitter are, or, as these sites prefer to call it, Twitority or Twithority. To start with, let me point you to a few well-written blog posts – which were highlighted by the folks at Made By Many – that provide much of the food for this post: Pete Sabilla on Twitter Combinatorics, Phil Windley on Asymmetric Follow, JP Rangaswami’s experiment on the breadth of information on Twitter, TechCrunch on re-tweeting as a measure of authority, Dan Zarrella on the most re-tweeted people on Twitter and Michael Litman’s thoughts on Twitority.

So, we’re finally at a stage where people are moving on from using Twitter to tell us what they’re doing, eating or thinking to the deeper questions regarding it’s use as a source of information and authority. (I’m not discounting its use during exigencies like the Mumbai attacks or even the recent plane crash in Denver, they are just not within the purview of this post). What are the basic facts? All we need right now is this: Twitter has 4-5 million users currently, of which 30% are very new or unengaged. Let’s be conservative and use 4 million as our base. Minus the 30% unengaged, we’re left with 2.8 million active users.

As all the posts above also opine, the measure of authority on Twitter is often judged to be the number of followers you have. In actual fact, if I had 50,000 followers, most of whom were people who never participated in conversation, how does that make me an expert? Secondly, even if I had 50,000 active followers, how does that automatically make me an ‘authority’ – in other words, how can popularity equal authority? (Twitter Grader is a good measure of popularity). Third, just because I have 50,000 followers, what subjects can I be counted as an expert on? The sun? Anthropology? The colour blue? The internet? Or, alternatively, if I am the CEO of a software firm and can be counted as an expert on software, who is to say that I am also not an expert on the Beatles, whose music I may have devoted years of my time to out of pure interest? Finally, assuming being the head of a tech firm qualifies you to be a subject authority, who ranks higher: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or the head of a small start-up in Silicon Valley?

The question therefore becomes not who is an authority or what their popularity rank is, but what is being said that is worth spreading or knowing. In other words, re-tweeting. Remember, again, that re-tweeting can be of original thoughts and of already quoted ones. If I am tweeting something that XYZ, George Bush or Martin Luther King said that is picked up and re-tweeted by people because they find it inspiring, interesting or entertaining, I should’nt automatically climb the re-tweet charts, because it isn’t my viewpoint that I am tweeting in that instance. What counts, drilling further down, is originality of data. So if I come up with an idea to solve the world’s problems (just kidding) – if I come up with an idea or the seed for an idea that can create actual change or ignite further discussion, then perhaps I am worth following or re-tweeting. If I come up with multiple original ideas, then, depending on the definition of the term in the Twitter sense, I am an ‘authority’. But who has the right to judge originality of thought? You? Me? Barack Obama? In essence, there could be billions of original thoughts coming from 2.8 million people on Twitter.

The internet is devoid of bias. On Twitter, we can choose who we want to follow, and even who follows us (blocking is an option). We can, in other words, exercise our choice. People use Twitter for different reasons: some for personal ones, to stay in touch only with close friends and family – they’re the ones most likely to have protected updates. Then there are those who want to spread their knowledge, increase their knowledge or build their personal brand image. Finally, and increasingly of late, there are entities – corporate or non-profit bodies – who aim to build their brand equity. For this last category, the larger the number of people they can access, the better, with one caveat: they must be able to add value to their followers.

As we at Made By Many were discussing this whole issue internally yesterday and today, Stuart said this: ‘What Twitter authority needs is a page-rank system like Google which measures authority based on who follows you based on their authority based on who follows them and on and on, for any given keyword, of how much they talk about it in their Twitter’.

Now that’s the seed of a truly valuable idea. I’m sure this is only the beginning of the debate. We’ll be exploring this whole idea of Twitter authority vs. popularity vs. originality further. Stay tuned.