Search Twitter - but on whose authority?

Fascinating debate raging on Techmeme about whether Twitter should be able to search by number of "follows" (as a proxy for authority). At first glance its a "what's the issue here"?. After all, Google pretty much runs its page ranking off links, and Technorati uses links to a blog over a last 6 month period to rank its authority.

So why all the fuss, why so many coming out against it?

Firstly, its worth looking at why its being propesed - Loic leMeur organised a major conference (Le Web), the reaction to which was, well, controversial - and he clearly wanted to search Twitter to find the individuals who were the most followed and try to neutralise them where news was bad. Problem was, sifting through 6,000 odd comments is non trivial (though I must say it can't be that hard to build a routine that would map identity of commentators in a particular stream by number of followers*.)

He gives away the Web 2.0 game a bit when he says:

“We’re not equal on Twitter, as we’re not equal on blogs and on the web”

Ooops - the Kool Aid packet preaches that the Web 2.0 media is Democratic, not Feudal. Shame on you for giving the game away Loic

The key arguments against this sort of search are fundamentally that:

(i) People who have little knowledge on a topic, but high overall authority, will win out over those with real knowledge (an issue we pointed to in this article about the risks of User Generated Content drowning in its own noise) to the eventual detriment of the overall ecosystem

(ii) This sort of dynamic in search will drive more "super user" wannabees to attempt to add more users - ie the system will be more gamed than before, reducing the experience and its democratic ethos.

(iii) The service is locked into early adopter highly linked users - ie its the old "rich get richer" issue in social nets - the hit head gains, the long tail is irrelevant.

Realistically, since Twitter is increasingly being seen as email 2.0, PR/Marketing people will write these sort of routines, its arrival is inevitable. And judging by the jostling that goes on every time a new status list on Twitter is shown, the number of players will be huge, despite pious declarations to the contrary.

However, this should not be the only way to search people on any system. The endgame will be the ability to search across a wider number of user volunteered parameters (location, people you follow, as examples), not just followers.

* And indeed, 24 hours later, there was one.....