Feedback On My Little Twitter Idea

Thanks, Everyone, For The Good Ideas

Your messages (condensed) RE: My Little Twitter Idea:

1. Twitter works because we like little things.  So, you're saying: highlight the big little.

2. Agree.  Problem with FB and other platforms is: not succinct like Twitter.

3. Use "Favorite" and "Hashtag" instead of adding "Ranking" and "Community"

That first response wraps it up in a nutshell.  Twitter works because it minimizes.  But if it also promoted those best at Tweeting, it would be a much deeper medium.

The second response underlines: Why Twitter?  Why not look to FB or other media?  Answer: shorten 'er 'n' link, Capt'n.

The third response is tempting.  Within each hashtag, who has the most favorites (hearts)?  But hashtags are also used for irony, jokes and afterthoughts.  And fans would litter twitter with obligatory faves.  So, limit it: your favorite five Twitterati in each of five communities.

You may send more feedback to:  55jhs56  at  gmail.com

Update: 2/26/16:  I've revised my original Little Twitter idea to mesh 'Communities' with existing 'Hashtags'.

Update: 3/24/16: I've incorporated a commenter's idea (rank users, but based on the number of followers they have).  This idea wouldn't work, because of all the fake accounts, unless... the only followers who were counted were those who had submitted at least one top-5 ranking.

I will tie this all up in a subsequent post.

My Little Twitter Idea -- Finally Revealed

Tweak Twitter Idea Contest -- My Entry (for Jan. 8th update see next blog post)

On May 5th of last year I wrote about My Little Twitter Idea.  Or at least I teased the idea.  I thought there might be a 1-in-10,000 chance that someone at Twitter, or maybe a social media start-up, might somehow read my post and decide to contact me, wanting to know about the idea in advance.  But of course, no.

And who blames them?  After all, this is only my "little" twitter idea, still leaving my "big" idea (see contact information below).  But I've teased enough, so here it is, and you can judge for yourself:

Please, don't get me wrong, I love Twitter.  It has the exciting rush that is youth; the rapid giggle of delight at devouring a morsel in one bite.  But the Twitter-verse has a problem.  I know there're people on twitter who'd appeal to me.  I'd love to listen in on their lives; what makes them tick; the things around them they point out.  But it's way too time consuming checking out people the Twitter algorithm offers up as likely candidates.  That's because Twitter's suggestions just aren't narrowly enough drawn (Here's another punk band because your niece, who you follow, is in a punk band).  I want a better, quicker way.

I want Twitter to be way deeper.  I'll start out with a baby step:

Have a Ranking icon at the top of a Twitter user's home page.  Click on the ranking icon, if you want, and it takes you to a page where you can submit a top-five favorites ranking of those you follow.

A '5' ranking = 25 points.  '4' = 16, '3' = 9, '2' = 4 and '1' = 1.  Add together everyone's assigned numbers and you get a sense of who people enjoy reading.  So if I see a tweet from someone with tens of thousands of Twitterati, but only a grand rank total of '3' (three different people among those tens of thousands assigned a '1' out of a possible 5), I know there's not much there.  Likewise, someone with a high rank relative to their number of followers is likely an up-and-comer who's worth following.

For a second step along this Ranking pathway, keep reading.  What if, once you generate a top-5 ranking, you're allowed to join up to five Communities.  

A community would be a specific interest.  That is, book readers (tweeters who belong because they tweet about books), bicycle riders, or, say, listeners who enjoy funk.  Join that community, as one of your five.

Want more than five?  You can pay Twitter to be part of additional communities. 

What about Hashtags?  Obviously hashtags were meant to do something similar to what I'm proposing for communities, but I still have to wade through hundreds of tweets looking for gems.  Compare that to a community like, let's say, Astronomy.  Without a ranking, I have no way of knowing that Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a superstar and will likely rank in my top five once I'm exposed to his brilliance.

What about polymath tweeters?  If I'm a member of The Beatles community, but only tweet about the Beatles once a month, my feed isn't going to interest members who just want to discuss the Lads from Liverpool.  That's where hashtags can be combined with communities.  Only those tweets that are hashtagged are included in the feed for that community.  And even if your Beatles tweets are infrequent, if they're exceptional, you might still end up on someone's top-5, thanks to being in the same community.

And that brings us to a third step that Twitter could take with Rankings.  Instead of one's normal feed, one could instead jump to a single community feed.  And, within that feed, twitter users could be ranked a second time, thus making the polymath tweeter nearly as likely to appear as a prominent member.

My guess is that these three steps would mean:

1. Easy access to the most popular tweeters in thousands of specialized communities.
2. A way for good writers, and those who apply themselves, to gain an audience in a given community.
3. A way for Twitter to not only make more money, but grow accordingly.
4. The lessening of the Bot epidemic on Twitter.

How so RE: Bots?  Currently, Bots are used to create fake Twitter accounts that make a celebrity (or those seeking to be celebrities) seem popular.  If submitting a top-5 ranking using the Ranking icon involved some kind of character-recognition filter that required a minute or two to complete, it would be a lot more difficult to create phony accounts.  Besides, those with lots of fake followers would find they were in the same boat with that user described above, who had tens of thousands of followers and a ranking total of '3'.

Additional Update 3/24/16:
At Slate, a writer named David Auerbach has proposed a way to eliminate the negativity on Twitter--the responses aimed at users that have little purpose other than abuse.

In response to Auerbach's idea, Hjalti Thorarinsson, in comments, suggests that Twitter users be ranked according to followers (plus approved responses), and that this would heighten the level of discourse.  This would be a much simpler idea than my top-5 ranking system.  The reason it might be problematic, however, is that upwards of half of all large Twitter accounts have inflated follower numbers.

The reason I mention Hjalti's idea, though, is that it might actually make my idea much better.  That is, if users were all rated, as Hjalti suggests, based on their number of followers, but ratings only included those who'd completed at least one top-5 list.  The celebrity user with all the fake followers would rate abysmally, compared to someone with genuine followers who loved reading the latest.  So, by taking an active part in the Twittersphere, those you follow benefit--what better incentive?

Contact me about my Big Twitter Idea @   55jhs56  at  gmail.com