Twitter’s API is getting an update that will give developers the opportunity to choose from tweets with “none,” “low,” “medium” and “high” values. This feature, intended to help applications that display tweets from a stream curate high-quality tweets, essentially evaluates tweets. Twitter shares that the “medium” and, eventually, the “high” tweets will “roughly correlate” to the “Top Tweets” results for searches on Twitter.com.
“This will allow applications to more easily surface certain types of content from otherwise noisy or high-volume feeds,” according to Arne Roomann-Kurrik on Twitter’s Developers blog.
While the algorithm or formula Twitter uses for evaluating tweets in this manner is unknown, we can extrapolate from how Top Tweets are selected:
“Top Tweets are Tweets that lots of people are interacting with and sharing via retweets, replies, and more. If Tweets you love aren’t showing up as Top Tweets, it means those Tweets may not be part of the widespread conversation.”
This move could be big news for social analytics and social influence platforms (e.g., Klout, Topsy).
This API attribute will be available to developers on Wednesday, Feb. 20. Another attribute enabling developers to filter tweets by language will be available after that date.
Twitter appears to be opening up to the public about how it evaluates tweets. In early January, Twitter revealed that it uses human editors to refine and give context to its real-time search, which consequently helps it deliver relevant ads.
For marketers, this is a reminder to adhere to best practices and focus on boosting engagement on Twitter.
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