Full Discloser: I’m @MarkMayhew, I’m currently ranked #38 on the TweeterBoard:
http://tweeterboard.com/top-100

I think that Tweeterboard might at least appear more reliable if we understood the algorithm that was used. For me, I analyzed my “gives love” and “gets love” stats and I can with 100 percent certainty report that they are not correct. I have a handful of people I talk to ALL the time and they aren’t even on either of my lists. There’s also a significant delta between giving and receiving showing up with people I talk to, who @ me and who I @ them all the time, but it looks like they never talk to me.

I suppose I agree that Tweeterboard is fun. I wrote in my blog that it’s a tool to help finding people, but I would never add someone just because he or she is on the TB. I would click through them to their convos, see who they are having interesting convos, and more than likely add the people they are talking to before I add them.

Anyhoo… just my two cents. Nice work on the project, Geoff and Doug. Always fun whenever you can buck the system.

You’re right, of course, that baiting people into replying to you will boost your reputation. Temporarily, anyway. It remains to be seen whether someone can do that over a sustained period of time. TB doesn’t give you a historical view of your reputation score, but if it did I think you’d see that people who had consistently high reputations would be engaged with their followers rather than just baiting them.

Part of the TB experiment (and it’s really just that–an experiment–not a product or company or whatever) is to observe how people react to this kind of measurement and ranking. So it’s been interesting to watch people focus so intently on reputation while ignoring much better conversation metrics like volume and spread. (This gets at conniereece’s comment about reciprocity.)

I agree with almost all of this (it even sounds like something I posted on my blog a few days ago):

Like many other so called rankings, it’s game-able, and subjected to the biases of the algorithm creator. Rankings are always great ways to find new Twitterers and blogs to follow, but they vary in accuracy. One key barometer to look for is multiple variables, with more variables countering individual metric weight, hopefully making for a more balanced, composite picture.

I’ve never claimed the reputation algorithm is perfect, just that it’s a better way of calculating influence than the other techniques being using (like # of followers). There’s an interesting story behind the algorithm which I’ll tell sometime in the near-ish future.

On a related note, people’s concerns about data quality are valid and I’m slowly dealing with those. But, you know, being an aggregator is hard… look at Technorati for an example of how difficult it can be to get the data side right.

About the negative box score: the box score spread shows you how many messages you’ve exchanged with a person. A negative score means you’ve sent them more than they’ve sent you. Nothing inherently bad about a negative score–it just tells you about the equity in the conversation.

I like “vanalytics” by the way. Kudos to whoever coined that. :)

- Gene

R.

So the TB stuff isn’t doing anything for me, what does do something for me is satisfied clients. So while some jump around and hawk their TB position, I need to make another deposit.

Mack: With a significantly higher user base, and an open explanation of the algorithm, I think it would be more valuable.

By looking at the “Gives Love” and “Gets Love” pages of a particular user, it’s easy to discern which Twitter users make up someone’s close network. Using this method, I was able to DM a group of people to quietly promote a birthday surprise to honour a friend.

In that respect, Tweeterboard is an excellent research tool to discover who’s talking to whom the most. Conversely, when you look at your own “Love” stats, you might learn who’s been neglected in your own Twitter community and reach out.

I look at the Tweeterboard results the same way I would look at a horoscope; it is for entertainment purposes only and certainly not something to put too much stock in.

Adele McAlear
http://twitter.com/adelemcalear