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

Twitter Twaddle

[Frosty Piss]

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

Re:Twitter Twaddle

[neogeographer]

You've never used it have you? I now have the ability to instantly follow, and communicate with, all the experts in my field as if they were my co-workers. I know what they are reading about and what new technologies they are employing, instantly. No other exchange mechanism has been this easy to use and this powerful. It takes a deft hand to chose the right people to follow, true, but even a Slashdotter should be able to pick out those who represent expertise in their chosen field and could learn from the interactions now available, for free.

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.

Re:Twitter Twaddle

[neogeographer]

Hate is a strong word, but it's your post, not mine, so I'll let you be your own editor. It could be that you really do hate it. But the telephone? I'm an Alexander Bell fan as much as the next guy, but if a bunch of people called me up 150 times an hour with news I would freak out. There is no comparison. Twitter just silently passes interesting messages (yes, interesting, because you pick who to follow and thereby are picking those who are interesting to you).
If you curate your 'friends' list well, it will be a boon to your life as all the headlines that interest you are aggregated in one place with links to the stories that might mean something to you (more than headlines about another murder in Oakland, to use an example from an older form of news aggregation, the newspaper).
It's not for everyone, but its potential seems to be under-appreciated on the Dot.

Re:Twitter Twaddle

[darien.train]

Hate is a strong word, but it's your post, not mine, so I'll let you be your own editor. It could be that you really do hate it.

I do hate it. It teases me but doesn't deliver on the meat. It's a million quiche appetizers being force-fed intravenously without ever sitting down for a steak. But that's just my opinion. If it helps you out at work and gives you pleasure more power to you.

But the telephone? I'm an Alexander Bell fan as much as the next guy, but if a bunch of people called me up 150 times an hour with news I would freak out.

In no way did I imply that anyone use a phone as one would tweet.

There is no comparison.

I compared it to the telephone as a contender in powerful exchange mechanisms per your post and I'm still waiting for a reply for where justify that Twitter is more powerful than the telephone.

Twitter just silently passes interesting messages

Read what you wrote there and tell me that doesn't sound annoying on principal.

If you curate your 'friends' list well, it will be a boon to your life as all the headlines that interest you are aggregated in one place with links to the stories that might mean something to you (more than headlines about another murder in Oakland, to use an example from an older form of news aggregation, the newspaper).

What I'm getting at is that there are lots of people who have no desire to curate their friends or lists of their friends for other than social reasons. Twitter keeps me from working and I have no desire to read streams of bumper-sticker-level thoughts from friends and luminaries in my time off. This is a common attitude that I am explaining so that you can have empathy for those who detract it.

It's not for everyone, but its potential seems to be under-appreciated on the Dot.

I think a lot of people on the Dot understand the lessons learned from the tech boom and can smell the air of forever-startup emanating from Twitter HQ. It's nothing I can put my finger on but there's just something about Twitter that seems fleeting.

Re:Twitter Twaddle

[Serious Callers Only]

A more significant issue with this and any other measure of competence based on popularity is that being expert and being popular/linked to are not remotely connected.

Expert != popular
Expert != well liked
Expert != referenced hundreds of times by people who know nothing about the domain

Expert, at least in the old-fashioned sense, means knowledgable and skilled in a particular domain.

The reason twitter is full of twaddle is that the minds of most people, collectively, are full of twaddle, and they like it that way.

Just as slashdot attracts a certain sort of internet blow-hard pontificating on the inferiority of others, so twitter attracts those in search of trivia and light relief, mingled with the occasional interesting link. I use both sites :)

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:Predicted

[blair1q]

Marshall McLuhan said "The Medium is the Message" nearly half a century ago.

Re:Predicted

[DeadDecoy]

The problem I see with this, is that twitter twitter seems like a constrained information channel that would limit how much an expert could convey. Imagine if we tried cramming Knuth's collected works down a 140 character channel: and for the proof of why this sorting algorithm is O(n log n) see tweets 234 - 702. Tweets, because of their brevity are more suited to spontaneously commenting like: meet at mvies 2pm or omg I have bellybutton lint lol.

Re:Predicted

[owlnation]

"Marshall McLuhan said "The Medium is the Message" nearly half a century ago."

He also coined "Global Village", and the problem with twitter is that it makes you realize that there's one hell of a lot of village idiots in the village.

Re:Predicted

[DeadDecoy]

That's certainly a possibility, but tweeting a hyperlink seems like adding a superfluous layer of indirection when google and google scholar already do a pretty good job of looking up people by topic. But, to be fair, I wouldn't know if useful information can be extracted from tweets until it's done.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. There is no 'unfollow' choice for spam. The ability to aggregate one's news feeds on Twitter is astoundingly powerful; it is up to the user to make the choice about who to follow and what to care about. If one Twitter feed sucks, drop it and move on. That is not spam.

Seems a good idea, but...

[bbtom]

...their notion of expertise is limited to only the sorts of things Silicon Valley types think are valuable. 'Social media', 'cloud computing', even Apple.

Actually, it'd be quite useful for both business and politics to be able to find if there are people on Twitter who are influencing people on science, who are influencing our democratically-elected representatives, our media figures and so on.

(After writing that, someone from PeerIndex has just responded to me moaning on Twitter and said that they are tracking a wider variety of categories and will be exposing that in the future.)

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

My prediction:

[deadhammer]

This will be gamed by spammers before it even launches.

Re:If you want idiots

[General Wesc]

Yeah, only dumbasses like Tyler Cowen and Aza Raskin.

There may not be much expert discussion on Twitter, but when you dogmatically insist that everyone on Twitter is an idiot you're actually identifying only one person as an idiot.

Re:No

[c0lo]

If, recent, history tells us anything..... anything that is "social" that corporations jump on board with, will die a horrible fate.

While I tend to agree with you, it is not the Twitter that would die a horrible death: it is the experts that the PeerIndex will identify would they choose to hire their twitter-voice to the corporations.

To elaborate: the most influential persons are upright-standers. For example (without being limited to):

• the "cool" persons (non-conformists, I-don't-give-a-damn-of-what-you-think)
• persons which stand for some principles/values/etc, or which have expertise/wisdom/experience worth following (with no disrespect for any religious values, think Jesus and the apostles, if they would have used twitter ;) )

What do you think would happen with their stand if they'd offer it for hire/sale to corporations?
Granted, if this would spread at phenomenon level (rather than in some isolated cases), Twitter's fate will be the death: as anything with the sole purpose to distribute advertising (i.e. corporate spam).