Via TechCrunch I learned that Jon Wheatley has launched new service called Twitority in response to Loic Le Meur’s request for Twitter Search to be sortable by number of followers. Here is the mail that Wheatley wrote to Loic:
“Since I read your post this morning about authority based twitter searches I’ve been frantically trying to come up with a solution with some friends. 12 hours and numerous cups of coffee later I think we’ve cracked it.
You can now perform authority based twitter searches at http://twitority.comThis wasn’t an easy task. There are some very real limitations on the twitter API so we had to hack around it a little bit to find a way to do this. This obviously isn’t an ideal solution but hopefully it will suffice until twitter implements the feature themselves.â€�
I decided to test out Twitority by running a sample search* for the ‘biggest Twitter authorities’ (Twitorities?) for the term “Social Media.” Results:
MichDdot
gwenbell
SashaKane
conniecrosby
RobinGood
Dave_Malby
terrizsoloceo
CXI
roseannhiggins
Of course the fact that Scoble isn’t on here will immediately make most question the app’s validity :) Also the fact that the #1 Social Media authority, MichDdot, only has 4,489 followers is a further *obvious* indication that Twitority has a way to go before it really has substantive value. Nevertheless I think there is great value to be had here and I would love to see actual “authorities” for a keyword search differentiated from most recent Tweets from people with the highest authority.
*To clarify I know that Twitority is only in 12 hour alpha…the names above are not actually the biggest authorities on Social Media; clearly Twitority is only pulling recent tweets based on keyword. This was all really done in jest, as Twitority has clearly not indexed much at all as of yet.
—You can also follow me on Twitter/Squasher98
Update: Lots of links on Techmeme