4 ms·

I'm not sure I want search results to be littered with tweets. Am I the only one? How do you apply page rank/relevance etc to 140 chars?

by axod 17y ago

ccollins 17y ago
Relevance for tweets / status updates is pretty simple: Newer = more relevant. For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+halloween http://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+halloween gives me a bunch of halloween stores http://twitter.com/#search?q=san%20francisco%20halloween http://twitter.com/#search?q=san%20francisco%20halloween gives me a bunch of events (much more useful for me!)
- axod 17y ago
  If those sort of tweets get into search results simply based on "newest", you can be sure it'll be used extensively by marketers trying to spam their way into search listings.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    FWIW, Twitter seems to be on top of the arms race right now. A little while back I was getting 3-4 spam followers/@-replies a day; over the past few weeks, though, I've had exactly two.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      I am getting these almost every day now. Annoying at first, now I am considering using some other service. Twitter is too popular and popular services eventually become shit.
zaidf 17y ago
That is what the engineers get paid to do:)
fizx 17y ago
> I'm not sure I want search results to be littered with tweets. Granted. I hope they find balance, and imagine they'll AB test to see what users want. > How do you apply page rank/relevance etc to 140 chars? Some combination of freshness, quantity of retweets, pagerank of any linked pages, bit.ly stats on links, historic tweet quality of the user, similarity to trending topics, follower count of user, follower/followee ratio, incoming links to the page from blogs, etc, etc, etc.
senthil_rajasek 17y ago
retweets are one way to quantify relevance. "real people" are not going to retweet something unless they find it meaningful.
- riffer 17y ago
  I like the idea, but what's going to stop a bot from re-tweeting?
  - siong1987 17y ago
    If a lot of people have retweeted you, you are ranked higher on the list, which means that your retweet is ranked higher than retweet from a bot.
    - Devilboy 17y ago
      Yes but nothing stops a botter from running thousands of bots re-tweeting the main spambot's tweets.
- axod 17y ago
  Disagree. As I said a week or so ago. Retweeting is often the same as an email asking you to forward it to 100 friends to get good luck. I don't think that makes for very good measurement of what is important and what isn't.

I'm not sure I want search results to be littered with tweets. Am I the only one? How do you apply page rank/relevance etc to 140 chars?

by axod 17y ago

I'm not sure I want search results to be littered with tweets. Am I the only one? How do you apply page rank/relevance etc to 140 chars?

ccollins 17y ago

Relevance for tweets / status updates is pretty simple: Newer = more relevant. For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+halloween http://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+halloween gives me a bunch of halloween stores http://twitter.com/#search?q=san%20francisco%20halloween http://twitter.com/#search?q=san%20francisco%20halloween gives me a bunch of events (much more useful for me!)

axod 17y ago
If those sort of tweets get into search results simply based on "newest", you can be sure it'll be used extensively by marketers trying to spam their way into search listings.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  FWIW, Twitter seems to be on top of the arms race right now. A little while back I was getting 3-4 spam followers/@-replies a day; over the past few weeks, though, I've had exactly two.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    I am getting these almost every day now. Annoying at first, now I am considering using some other service. Twitter is too popular and popular services eventually become shit.

zaidf 17y ago

That is what the engineers get paid to do:)

fizx 17y ago

> I'm not sure I want search results to be littered with tweets. Granted. I hope they find balance, and imagine they'll AB test to see what users want. > How do you apply page rank/relevance etc to 140 chars? Some combination of freshness, quantity of retweets, pagerank of any linked pages, bit.ly stats on links, historic tweet quality of the user, similarity to trending topics, follower count of user, follower/followee ratio, incoming links to the page from blogs, etc, etc, etc.

senthil_rajasek 17y ago

retweets are one way to quantify relevance. "real people" are not going to retweet something unless they find it meaningful.

riffer 17y ago
I like the idea, but what's going to stop a bot from re-tweeting?
- siong1987 17y ago
  If a lot of people have retweeted you, you are ranked higher on the list, which means that your retweet is ranked higher than retweet from a bot.
  - Devilboy 17y ago
    Yes but nothing stops a botter from running thousands of bots re-tweeting the main spambot's tweets.
axod 17y ago
Disagree. As I said a week or so ago. Retweeting is often the same as an email asking you to forward it to 100 friends to get good luck. I don't think that makes for very good measurement of what is important and what isn't.