Sifting Authorities From Celebrities On Twitter

holy_calamity writes "Celebrities like Britney Spears may be the 'most followed' on Twitter, but new service PeerIndex mines the content of tweets and tracks the spread of links and phrases to reveal the hidden experts in specific areas, from cloud computing to venture capital. The authorities the site finds for a given subject often have only a few hundred followers, but the content of their tweets is known to spread widely. Could data mining tools like this be the future for people or businesses looking for new collaborators, advisers and influencers?"

Comments

Predicted

[LordSnooty]

There was an essay from around 2003 or maybe earlier which predicted that these so-called "news aggregators" would become as famous as the news-makers themselves, and would hold the most valuable positions in the information age. Someone refresh my memory, as it seems it might have been incredibly accurate.

Re:Seems a good idea, but...

[azeemazhar.co.uk]

Yeah. That would be me. We have a pretty flexible topic model, which let's you build authority networks within those topics. So for example, we have a super cheery one called "brain disorders' (mostly neurooncological); and things that are a bit broader like 'Web development frameworks'; as well as things like "space science" etc. anything missing, let us know and we'll probably rope you in to help us. cheers aa

Re:Twitter Twaddle

[dgatwood]

Pretty much. The idea that anyone would go to Twitter for "experts" is, well, staggering. Twitter content it pretty much Twaddle.

It isn't a big surprise that social networks requiring friends are generally poo-poo'd on Slashdot.

Uh... Twitter doesn't have friends. It has followers. There's a difference.