Topsy Labs » Influence: the New Currency of the Web - The Diigo Meta page

• 04 Nov 09
  

  Srikant Jakilinki

  Why am I influential?
  Topsy Influence measures the likelihood that, each time you say something, people will pay attention. Influence for Twitter users is computed using all historical retweets: millons of real, public statements indicating who’s listening to whom. On our website, roughly the top 0.2% most influential of all Twitter users are tagged “Highly Influential”, and “Influential” tags appear for the top 0.5% most influential Twitter users. So if Topsy says you are influential, you are part of a pretty small group!
  
  Influence matters
  Topsy search results are ranked by how often they are cited in tweets, and how influential the people are who tweet about them. We use influence for features across the site such as identifying Top Authors or the best Twitter Profile for a search term, for discovering trending terms and authors associated with a website. Influence is key to many of Topsy’s existing and upcoming features and it will be soon be available to developers via Topsy’s Otter API.
  
  Influence is robust
  Retweets are transitive. If Alice retweets a tweet from Bob, and Carol retweets Alice, Bob’s tweet has not only reached his and Alice’s followers, but also Carol’s. Influence is also transitive – the more influential people retweet you, the higher your influence will be.
  Influence is like wealth – you earn it. But you also spend a bit when you say things that draw no attention from people. Like wealth, your influence increases when you earn more than you spend. Topsy adjusts influence in relation to the entire “economy” of attention, making it difficult for individuals or groups to artificially inflate their influence.
  Influence is a robust measure – saying a lot more is not, on its own, enough to increase your influence. Your Topsy Influence increases when you say things other people find interesting.
  We recognise that while search results change in real-time, peoples’ influence is relatively stable, built up over long periods of time. As in the real world, influence on Topsy does not change very fast b

• 17 Oct 09
  

  Howard Rheingold

  "Topsy Influence measures the likelihood that, each time you say something, people will pay attention. Influence for Twitter users is computed using all historical retweets: millons of real, public statements indicating who’s listening to whom. On our website, roughly the top 0.2% most influential of all Twitter users are tagged “Highly Influential”, and “Influential” tags appear for the top 0.5% most influential Twitter users. So if Topsy says you are influential, you are part of a pretty small group!"

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