Should Twitter add authority search?
http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/12/twitter-we-need-search-by-authority.html
Should they add it?
What other types of search filters/options should they have?
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M$9 Answers
Loic brings up in his post about perhaps using followers as a mark. I am against that. Just as PageRank measures popularity rather than authority so it is with followers. Followers alone would make Barack Obama and Kevin Rose absolute authorities. As a metric for establishing authority, I would say follower counts happen to be a non-starter.
Authority is a qualitative concept rather than a quantitative one for most aspects of life. Only in the sciences have there been attempts to make such quantitative. Within that defined, narrower than general life community does it work. As Twitter does not have ways of verifying academic credentials, this is probably not what is meant either.
Now if we're defining authority as who has the loudest voice online, Twitter should not be the sole definition. With the different platforms Leo Laporte is producing content on, he has not just a loud voice in tech but also multiple voices in tech. Some of his podcast listeners won't receive his radio show and vice versa. Twitter is just one platform among many as Identica as well as the TWiT Army (which Leo Laporte seems to hang out at more than on Twitter) are out there as alternatives.
While Loic Lemur has a neat post with an intriguing idea, I am going to say that the foundation is not laid for it completely. This is an R&D question. Until that is done, I don't think authority search should be instituted.
KWIC, KWAC, KWOC are research tools DARPA created to index scientific works and thereby establish authority.
As for counts, those come from the Twitter follower counts leaderboard.
As for the library reference, I hold a Master of Science in Library Science degree from a duly-accredited institution. When I was actually working in libraries, I made authority records. My coursework focused on the various aspects of cataloging and authorities.
Leo is Leo and he is easily observed online. I participate in the Identica community in addition to Twitter.
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M$
Loic actually even gave an example for this in Loic's blog post. Why was the same information by him and Ben any different? Sprint responded to Loic since they got more "marketing value" by getting back to him instead of Ben, which is a shame!
Again, as with many other thing in life, quantity is not always quality! This is more then everything true for the number of followers! What matters is how relevant the information is in regards to your interests, and you can influence this directly by who you follow! As such a search which prefers people that I follow over others is more then enough.
Myself, loiclemeur.com
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M$
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M$the bible
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M$You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
I love you @loiclemeur, but hey, I don't want my "what are you thinking/doing status" not to be seen, just because I have 280 followers. I might have smth interesting to share with some people... : )
me and seesmic
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M$But not because people with more followers are necessarily more 'authoritative'.
It's because there should be a search result sort based on popularity. It is definitely of interest what highly-followed people are saying, and you should absolutely be able to sort based on this. By definition, highly-followed people are 'of interest', so it naturally follows that there is an implied demand for this feature. So I say: Light it up!
It probably should not be called 'authority', but rather 'popular' or something along those lines, as that is the most accurate thing you can say about this particular sort.
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Stowe Boyd just posted an interesting article where he says much the same thing -- but has some interesting ideas on how to do 'authority' correctly.
http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2008/12/authority-is-a.html
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M$People who don't have interesting things to tweet don't get many followers.
It's survival of the fittest (or, most interesting), people!
Moving forward with authority searching would be a catalyst in separating the interesting from the boring. Don't like it? Learn to be more interesting!
Authoritative searching would create incentive for people to expand their horizons and become more interesting.
I think the answer is YES, let's move forward, authority search should be implemented.
If anything, I think some sort of distinction should be made to separate business from personal - let's face it, no matter how interesting you may be, it's gonna be hard to get even close to Leo's 68,807 followers! So I would vote to add an attribute to everyone's Twitter account - commercial (y/n).
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