Twitter Grader Follows @‘s

Just 2 days ago, I pos­ted about the update to the Twit­ter Gra­der algorithm.

In the post I cove­red how the algo update now counts follo­wer to follo­wing ratios in their sco­ring and some other cool stuff. I also made a recom­men­da­tion for the next update: “My recom­men­da­tion for the next algo update? Figure out a way to incor­po­rate user inte­rac­tion (@’s, ret­weets, replys) After all, it’s all about the con­ver­sa­tion ”

Later that night, I recei­ved yet another com­ment from Dhar­mesh Shah, the deve­lo­per behind the Twit­ter Gra­der algo. He said:

Thanks for the second round of thought­ful analysis.

The algo­rithm was indeed upda­ted this wee­kend (and I think it’s “bet­ter”).
Quick note: We have 200,000+ uni­que pro­fi­les that have been gra­ded. In a way, this is good, but the flip side is that it takes some time to “nor­ma­lize” the data­base of gra­des. We’ve got sig­ni­fi­cant ser­ver resour­ces powe­ring the soft­ware, but I tend to “trickle-in” the recal­cu­la­tions. That’s a long-winded way of saying: It’s going to take some time for the actual gra­des to com­ple­tely reflect the upda­ted algorithm.

Making pro­gress (I think). The point about trac­king ret­weets and the “qua­lity” of con­ver­sa­tions for a given user pro­file is a really good one. I’ve been thin­king about that one and will try to incor­po­rate something like this in a future update.

Cheers,
Dharmesh

Well, it looks like the future update came soo­ner than expec­ted! 2 days is a pretty good turn-around time if you ask me! Today, lots of users are noti­cing a boost in their Twit­ter grade because of what I believe to be an incor­po­ra­tion into the algo of user-interaction.

Here are a few things to look at:

Just for good mea­sure, here are the charts, even though they are of less sig­ni­fi­cance this round..

Upda­ted Chart:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the Pre­vious Chart:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, take a look at mar­tin­bow­ling, kate­mo­rris, and neo­blog. All of these users saw somewhat sig­ni­fi­cant jumps in their gra­des, without sig­ni­fi­cant inc­rea­ses in follo­wers or other acti­vity in upda­tes or follo­wing num­bers over the past 2 days.

BUT, take a look at these screenshots: (click for popup) mar­tin­bow­ling kate­mo­rris neo­blog

All of these users have a high volume of inco­ming @‘s, part of the user-interaction recom­men­da­tion that Dhar­mesh said would be incorporated!

But there’s more.. I also chec­ked @gary­vee’s score, who I have been moni­to­ring over the past few months. He has 18,352 follo­wers, follows 2,134, and 3,306 upda­tes. The past cou­ple months his score has varied from 99.9 to 100.1. But is noto­rious for not repl­ying to inco­ming @‘s that he recei­ves. Today, after the update, his score is down to a 99.7. Con­sis­tent with this trend is @chris­win­field, who also saw a slight drop in score today. Chris and I actually know each other apart from twit­ter, and he’s a great guy.. But, he gets a TON of @‘s because of all of the twit­ter polls and ques­tions that he does, but doesn’t @ back at nearly the volume that he gets them in. (sorry chris )

This leads me to believe that Twit­ter Gra­der has incor­po­ra­ted in an update to their algo­rithm that accounts for inco­ming and out­going @‘s on your twit­ter account, like I had men­tio­ned in my last post.

If you find this to be true, leave a com­ment so I can check out your pro­file! And remem­ber tweeps, its all about the conversation!

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