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Here’s How To Fix The Twitter Suggested User “Advantage”
Yesterday Twitter made some changes to their default list – aka Suggested User List. I wrote about the changes noting that they only went halfway. Rackspace employee Robert Scoble said the change only went 25% and noted that Listorius was a better way to find users to follow. I am wondering if, perhaps, my cupcake delivery to Twitter’s HQ finally made it to the engineering team.
I mentioned that Dave Winer was added to the newly enhanced for your pleasure Suggested User List or SUL² for short. Dave has an excellent post regarding the changes and he has also asked to be removed from the list.
MG Siegler wrote a post on Techcrunch today showing what has happened to those on the list regarding their counts. I have a piece of paper with the counts of 20 suggested users and have noticed the same as MG did. That the counts have dramatically dropped. MG also noted, “After all, if you’re on it, and followed by a million people, any link you send out is likely to get many, many more clicks then by someone followed by a few hundred people.” MG left out, “and we make a boatload more money and visibility with those clicks”.
This is what many of us, including Dave Winer, have been saying all along. I call it “the gift” — frankly Twitter has changed the web’s ecosystem with their default list. What blogs would be higher up on the food chain today if those on the default list were never added?
Twitter’s Doug Bowman replied to MG noting that the change was “completely intentional”.
Today the chatter has been around how to “fix” the suggested user gift. Many say there’s no way to return the gift. Here’s how to fix it in 10 minutes and restore the balance back to the web’s ecosystem:
Set all suggested users (past and present) to a zero follower count.
Update: Louis Gray suggested the idea of zeroing out follower counts on a podcast he was on last night. You can listen to the podcast here.
I know you are all thinking that I must be drunk. How could this work? Clearly the users and blogs on the new default list are awesome, right? Isn’t that how they got on the list? And it is this greatness that makes my plan work so perfectly.
Let’s assume that those on the list get zeroed out tonight. They can easily build their base back because of the quality of their accounts. Also, they got their gift, so it would be fair to start back at zero.
Sure the suggested users will moan that it’s unfair to start again from zero. But with the gift they have received since day 1 of the list’s creation, the balance is still overwhelming in their favor.
The issue with this plan is going to be that people who go on tv to pimp their wares claiming “I have 850,000 followers, I’m an expert” will no longer be able to do that.
If Twitter doesn’t zero out the default user’s Twitter accounts, the issue will never be resolved and, as Dave Winer notes, there will always be two sets of Twitter users. And with Google supposedly ranking Twitter users partially by follower counts, this issue is bigger than just Twitter and needs to be corrected now.
a perfect solution and a quick one.
Yes, Could not agree more with Scobleizer! Quality wins every time over quantity!
This seems like an extreme fix to silence a vocal minority and anger a silent majority. I follow some of the people on the SUL even though I have never once looked at the actual list, and I would be irritated if those accounts just magically disappeared from my stream and I was forced to go back and follow them again.
The reality is that most people don’t care about the SUL and I think both iterations have helped early Twitter users more than it’s hurt people not on the list.
Jay – it’s not about the fact that most users don’t care – I agree with you. It’s about the way the list made some sites and people get boosts they should never have received – this change in balance will cost the web as a whole as twitter grows if it is not handled now. The question is if twitter got the guts.
There are imbalances like the SUL in all aspects of life though. A friend recommends you for a job. Your friend goes to movie A over movie B because you thought A was better. The list goes on, and on, and on.
That’s all the SUL really was, a recommendation of accounts Twitter employees thought were cool, it just happened to be on a bigger stage than a personal recommendation, bigger than the developers who created it probably ever imagined.
I think we could debate all day about whether the accounts on it deserved the recommendation but the damage has already been done and Twitter looks to be fixing the problems of the first SUL and they seem to be moving in the right direction. I also think the path to least resistance is to just leave the counts the way they are and move forward, so I’m guessing that’s what Twitter will do (because it’s what I’d do).
If I were running Twitter I’d go even further. I’d just get rid of the following count all together. Why? There are better ways to show you are getting engagement. How many lists you are on, and what lists you are on, for instance, is a far better way to show engagement.
But, seriously, our infatuation with numbers is nasty. It reinforces bad behavior and doesn’t enforce good behavior.
What’s more important? THE QUALITY OF YOUR TWEETS!!!
So, why not show how many of your tweets have been retweeted. Imagine in the place of “followers” you have “I’ve been retweeted 1,345 times!”
Now wouldn’t that start putting some juice on putting good quality tweets out?
Fine – remove the counts, but zero out the SUL first. If not, the same issue (and a worse one at that) would exist. SUL users already hide that they got their followers from the gift, and now they would be able to do that for infinity.
In order for Twitter to do that they would need to remove these folks from my following and my lists. That would greatly piss me off. I don’t see Twitter ever doing that. Yeah, life is unfair (I was born in USA, other people were born in Haiti and you can see the unfairness of that on CNN), see my other note below.
agree that life is unfair – if it was fair i would be 6′2″ with good hair HA :)
but there is a difference btw your comparison and the sul
I look at it like some people won the lottery. The fact that they do shouldn’t affect my life at all. But it took a year to get to this point. :-)
In the Edge Theory Conversations broadcast I did with Chris Saad last night, I also suggested zeroing out the followers counts. Chris said this was part of game theory, and it would never happen.
Allen is right that your theory on counted retweets would only matter in a non-SUL world. We know, for instance, that Mashable has a retweet army, boosted by the SUL position. Had that account and others never been there, their numbers would be dramatically different.
I’m with you on just hiding all the counts…it would actually solve a lot of problems…and if they really wanted to keep a version of it, come up with a tweet rank…don’t tell anyone how it’s really calculated (but base it on some level of retweeted, listed count, tweet count, followers, following, link share, etc.)…it would both generate buzz AND fix most of the ‘follower’ count gripes…
Oh and as an aside, for finding ‘interesting’ people to follow…I would like to humbly recommend http://grou.pe which let’s you pick up to five people you’re interested in as a group and then tells you who they all currently follow that you don’t (disclosure: I’m the developer behind grou.pe)
Robert you love the follower count game – don’t lie :)
I love games. Yes. But not one where the goalposts get moved by the refs. :-)
Seriously, I love the list game a lot more. http://listorious.com
Why?
Because you have to do work to win at that game. You have to put together great lists. Oh, and it’s fair (at least right now) because Twitter hasn’t messed with that game.
But, seriously, look at the popularity of Foursquare. Humans love games.
Since we do, why not shut down the one that enforces bad behavior (and one that is not a meritocracy anyway) and start up a different game? We’ll survive.
Allen: you have a point but Twitter will never zero out all followers. The damage is done and I don’t see it changing. Life is unfair sometimes. I was born in the USA and not in Haiti. I’m not complaining.
My focus now is on providing great content for the people who interact with me and if I don’t get put on some stupid list oh well.
So far that has served me well. I’m not on the SUL but have gained 17,000 new followers and thousands of new list followers since last June. I value every single one of those followers because they came to me organically, not by being on some stupid list.
You can game the lists too. I noticed a lot of people on lists from Twibes. After checking out Twibes and getting added to Tech, blogging and others, my list count went from 1,100 to more than 1,600. There is always a way.
Good point, but at least the game is even and no one is applying a finger to the scale.
I’m glad I created an even game. In any case, Twibes is behaving more humanly now, with people following existing lists.
Do you mean zero-out the follower count by actually removing all their followers?
Or just leaving their followers alone, and making the follower count = zero?
Huge difference. I only follow a few people from the SUL and most of those people I followed from before it was added. It would suck if Twitter just removed them from the people I’m following. (Even though twitter sometimes randomly loses people I’m following anyway).
I agree that the original SUL was a wacky deal, not good for journalistic integrity etc. – though my employer is on it and I have not held back from any criticism of Twitter. I haven’t taken the time to check out the new SUL yet, to be honest. I will say this, though: there is no zero. Whether it’s old media monopoly broadcast brand advantage, or the SUL, or even our own conditioning to trust white people more than people of color, men more than women, etc. there is no way to roll back to a recent point in time when things were fair. At the same time, when it comes to media outlet support from places like Twitter, I’m not AT ALL saying this makes it ok or this is the only factor, but past performance is a factor as well. I can’t help but notice, my friend Allen, that you only have 200 subscribers on Facebook. Have you seen that other site, the one with an M, that has 100k? We’re up to 6k now at RWW. Distribution is a part of what we’re competing on, and one of the factors in that is writing things that people share. Maybe you’ve written less stuff that people have shared widely, thus you have smaller numbers, thus you’re not picked on SUL type stuff. Maybe it’s in part a matter of what breadth of people are interested in what you write about, too. That M-blog writes really general interest stuff, we write much less so at RWW (and we’re much smaller than them) and you write a whole lot of industry inside baseball for which there is a smaller potential audience. Maybe we’re not doing as good a job as them though, and maybe you’re not doing as good a job as us. I’m just saying, dude. There are lots of factors, it’s not a clear picture. That said, I do not support the existence of the SUL the way it originally was. And I think the Twitter leadership is made up of elitist schlubs. And I like you and your blog, quite a bit.
Marshall – thanks for your thoughts. I have never wanted to be on the list and if I was added, I would ask to be removed. Why? Because I want people near me who want to be near me not because they just checked a “follow all” box like your blog and the blog you list as “M” (lol). I am confident that you have not changed your thoughts based on being listed.
Also, regarding your counts on say Facebook – remember that those too are influenced by your status on the default list. This is the real gift that Twitter gave you – it’s the ability to not just monetize the direct traffic, but also to capture users in other places – rss, facebook, email, whatever.
On the general interest vs specialized type postings, I am working on a post about this – I hope to have it done end of next week.
as a side note, I am writing a lot less today because I am focusing my time on CC. I’ve been trying to decide how I will handle CN going forward.
So, given this, can we expect a ReadWriteWeb article titled “The Twitter leadership is made up of elitist schlubs”? Looking forward to it.
Marshall: just wondering where you stand on gifts from companies you cover? If Facebook said “here’s 1,000 shares of friends and family stock,” would you take it? Or, if Sony said “here’s a free $5,000 3D TV” would you take it?
If not, why did you accept a gift from Twitter worth many thousands (and potentially millions) of dollars?
No I wouldn’t accept those gifts Robert. It wasn’t my account that got added to the SUL. This is a matter of philosophical debate and I’m speaking only for myself here.
Louis, note the presence of the words “I THINK” in that sentence. See also this draft of my forthcoming post titled “Louis Gray is Really Being Obnoxious These Days” http://bit.ly/4kb77v ;)
Not for nothing…but that’s some funny stuff right there Marshall! :-D
I’ve thought about deleting my Twitter account and starting over since being on the list (and seeing the 300 person a day drop that comes with not being on the list.)
I don’t think, if I deleted my account, that doing so would prevent me from going to the media and saying “I’m an expert on Twitter” because whether I had a new account or not, at one point, I did have a million users. That number, even if it’s no longer currently the case, would still be salient enough to let me jump ahead of other Twitter users if I wanted / needed to, especially if I were attempting to get press for my book (which should be noted, has nothing to do with Twitter or social media.)
Everything else here I agree with, but that point stuck out at me as being well intentioned, but probably not as effective as thought.