I have been studying Twitter Grader for some time now, as I can see that people put a lot of value on being ranked highly there.
In my study, I have noticed how easy it is to influence the rankings merely by conversing with others, by retweeting their tweets and by increasing the number of followers you have and the quality of those that are following you and your ability to engage them interactively.
Then I thought to myself last night, how would I be ranked if I were in America instead of Australia? So I decided to do a little test. To change my location settings in Twitter.com to New York, USA. The outcome was astounding. I was ranked in the 600's when my location was Perth, Western Australia. Then suddenly I ranked in the top 200's when I changed my location to New York. This raises a lot of questions about the validity of the rankings system. My rating of 99.98 went up to 100 as well and the only change was a change of location!
This tells me that the whole Twitter Grader.com site is biased towards people living in America.
I have decided that I will no longer support this site in protest of it's rating system.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Friday, March 27, 2009
It just makes you wonder about Twitter Grader.com
Posted by Hayley Solich (aka WomenCan & The I Can Woman) at 8:25 PM
Labels: Popularity, Rankings, Twitter, Twitter Grader
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3 comments:
Interesting post, Hayley. Got me thinking so I tried doing what you did and changed my location to California, USA the first time and then New York, the second time. My rank of 96.5 didn't change with either location.
Still, I wonder if once you get a certain rank - say 98+ if that can change the rules of the game?
Try changing your location from the US to another country of the world and see what happens.
Hi Hayley, I am not game to even visit Twitter - I'm already on Facebook and I figure one addiction is enough!!!
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