@NowSourcing.Com

Some of you may have noticed a new Twitter Retweet logo marking your friends’ RT’s. Since users, the originators of the term, have been utilizing “RT” (followed by the author’s @name) almost as long as Twitter’s been around, and applications such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic implemented the feature long ago, what took Twitter so long in adding such a simple and necessary feature? This is something I would have expected to be released prior to Twitter Lists.

Let’s just assume they wanted to take their time, ensuring they didn’t leave anything out. From our initial impression, it looks as if they didn’t. The Twitter developers were sure to include a retweet counter and smartly prevented users from editing the original tweet. I’m sure you’re all eagerly awaiting your opportunity to give it try.

Update: looks like Twitter has pulled Retweets for now.

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With the widespread growth and popularity of Twitter these days, the userbase so broad, do you know your place within this vast social network? How do you rank amongst your fellow Tweeple?

The following 10 Twitter ranking websites are being graded on a scale of 1-10 for:

• Overall site score
• Significance of their Twitter account scoring system
• Value of the information provided
• User interface design
• Traffic (unique visitors per month, based upon data from Compete)

Twitterank

Overall Site Ranking: 5
Reputation: 7
Information Quality: 6
User Interface: 3
Traffic: 9,430

On Twitterank, my current ranking is 21.92, which is in the 88.87 percentile, and has 33.33% confidence. Wtf? Exactly. So the rank itself is still unclear, but the percentile means that my account is “better” than 88% of other Twitter users… but, not to worry, the algorithm has only 33% confidence in the score. Which means it thinks there’s a 67% chance it’s wrong. Seems pointless.

Twitterholic

Overall Site Ranking: 7
Reputation: 9
Information Quality: 7
User Interface: 4
Traffic: 143,209

I’m ranked 33,106th according to followers, and 479th in my location (San Francisco). Alright, harsh, but not so bad. Taking a closer look, I see that the last time Twitterholic actually looked at my account was the end of May. Even after clicking the “Crawl My Stats!” button, nothing is updated. They seem to base the rankings solely upon the number of followers you have, which can be a factor if you’re up there, or can really not make a difference if none of your followers are active – or, uh, human.

BuzzOm

Overall Site Ranking: 6
Reputation: 7
Information Quality: 5
User Interface: 7
Traffic: 28,258

Apparently my “Twitin” score on BuzzOm is 54. Under the FAQ section, they describe the score as “a measure of your social activity in Twitter. These are calculated using simple behavioral model of the user. This has been tested among 2 lakhs users.” Huh? What is a “lakh user”? (This seems to be from an overuse of Google Translate, perhaps.) Thankfully it’s gone into more detail in the next question, and says it takes in consideration a user’s retweet, tweet efficiency, and influence scores. Where do I find those? Okay, this is vague and I’m just plain lost in how they come up with it.

Tweefight

Overall Site Ranking: 6
Reputation: 6
Information Quality: 3
User Interface: 9
Traffic: 1,280

Tweefight is actually kinda fun, and doesn’t give an official ’score’. Tweefight compares you to another Twitter user and you go head to head to “fight” it out. I put myself up against @NowSourcing and lost. Putting myself up against my real ‘archenemy’ showed that I came out ahead. With Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and Oprah (@oprah) head to head, see who comes out in first:

What is it basing the fight results on? “Tweerank,” which claims to be made up of any factor you can think of (i.e. a user’s involvement, followers, updates, etc). Who cares? It’s still fun.

TwitRank.me

Overall Site Ranking: 7.5
Reputation: 7
Information Quality: 8
User Interface: 8
Traffic: minimal (not enough data)

Got a 7 out of 10 on TwitRank. Not much explanation, but considering they first display my amount of followers, how many folks I’m following, and how many total updates I have, these are likely the deciding factors. This gets me to thinking, what if a company, that knows nothing of social media, looks to hire an ‘expert’ and uses their Twitter account ranking as a deciding tool? Well, that means so many of these wannabe “social media experts” will be getting jobs, without knowing how to get the results for clients. Would that make them con artists, spammers, or just ignorant?

Twitter Score

Overall Site Ranking: 7.5
Reputation: 8
Information Quality: 8
User Interface: 9
Traffic: 9,971

On Twitter Score, there are two different ranks/scores listed. The Twitter Score they came up with for my account is 7.9 out of 10. My rank is 6,532 out of 78,825. No explanation provided for either number, but there is a nifty little graph of followers/friends available. Useful? Not without a shown method to how it calculates scores.

Twinfluence

Overall Site Ranking: 7
Reputation: 8
Information Quality: 8
User Interface: 6
Traffic: 32,134

Apparently my rank is 1,917 on Twinfluence out of all Twitter users, with a 99% score, and 100% “2nd order followers”. Like the scores, but let’s see if they have any semblance of accuracy. They calculate followers, plus second-degree followers, to come up with your ‘reach’. So apparently my ‘reach’ is to 100% of the Twitterverse, which means that if I Tweet something with great impact, that Tweet could potentially be seen by all Twitter users. They also somehow calculate the constant growth and the individual influence of your followers, so that apparently works into the score – though it doesn’t say which.

FollowCost

Overall Site Ranking: 7
Reputation: 5
Information Quality: 9
User Interface: 7
Traffic: 5,373

Let me stop laughing first at a few of my friends that are “nuclear” to follow. Okay. It is seemingly useless, but so much fun. FollowCost lets you know how annoying it will be to follow any given Twitter user, based upon the average amount of Tweets they make per day. Sean Combs (@iamdiddy) is one of the nuclear folk to follow.

If they update too much, the screen shakes (well, the browser screen) with a graphic that says “Nuclear Follow Cost,” meaning don’t follow this person unless you’re obsessed with them.

Retweetrank

Overall Site Ranking: 7
Reputation: 9
Information Quality: 7
User Interface: 4
Traffic: 20,427

Here we get to see the scores of our fellow Tweeple based upon how many mentions they’ve gotten from other Twitter users. This is the essence of the popularity contest. High numbers of followers do not necessarily turn out the activity and interactivity that you’re looking for. Retweetrank shows how much you’re being retweeted and publicly messaged, plus what percentile you’re in amongst other Twitterers (I scored a retweet rank of 8405).

The Winner

Twitter Grader

Overall Site Ranking: 8
Reputation: 9
Information Quality: 8
User Interface: 7
Traffic: 257,938

My current rank is 98.9 through the Twitter Grader system. When I first checked back in February, it was 63. The highest (about two weeks ago) was 99.7. They say the ranking is based upon the total number of your followers along with the ratio of how many you are following to how many are subscribed to your updates, the amount and pace of updates, and how engaged you are (i.e. conversations, mentioning other Tweeple and them mentioning you). Additionally, Twitter Grader ranks you amongst your peers, based upon your “grade” and location.

By now, a lot of Internet users are suffering from URL-shortening overload syndrome and I am no exception.  When I found out about Stumbleupon’s Web 2.0-aptly named Su.pr, I can’t deny that I groaned more than just a bit.  When it comes to the Unique Ideas Department, URL shortening is old hat and I wondered why Stumbleupon couldn’t work on something new and exciting. Something to get my browsers in a twist and my cookies all warmed up.

But after trying the service for over a week, I have to admit that my initial reaction may have been a little bit hasty.  This shortening service may actually have some potential.  If they work on the ideas that people are suggesting, the veteran of the game – TinyURL - may start to have some sleepless nights ahead.

The main advantage that Su.pr has over other similar sites is that it has the power of the Stumbleupon community behind it.  Once Su.pr gets onto the Stumbleupon toolbar, those fans will be using it all the time to shorten and track their Stumbleupon submissions.  This is something that big names such as TinyURL doesn’t have – a ready made user base who will embrace the service from the word go.

You can sign into Su.pr with your Stumbleupon account or use the beta code “suprbeta”. (Update: StumbleUpon just made Su.pr public) Once in, you have two immediate options – just shorten a link (to do with what you will) or “Post” which will send the link to Twitter and/or Facebook.

Clicking “just shorten” will give you a nice short URL as the service is supposed to do:

But if you choose to “post” it, you can then open up all the tracking possibilities.

Once posted, you will see your “stats” section open up below with the link you have just posted.

Now click on “thumb up now” to submit the link to Stumbleupon.   This opens up a box to thumb the link up and also give you an opportunity to make a comment, just like you would on any other Stumbleupon submission.

After you have submitted the link to Stumbleupon, click on “view stats” to get an immediate overview of who is viewing your submission.

As you can see, it shows you how many Stumbleupon views you are getting as well as retweets and where your traffic is coming from – directly typed in, bookmarked, email and mobile.  Since this link has just been submitted, the page is pretty much blank but once people start receiving the link, that graph will quickly fill up.

One possible privacy issue is that you can view the Stumbleupon stats for ANY website, even if you are not the owner of that site.  Just go to http://su.pr/report/domain/yoursite.com/ and enter the domain name in place of yoursite.com.  OK, perhaps some webmasters may not consider their stats top secret but some others, including the really big blogs with a lot of advertising money at stake, may not want their stats thrown out there for all to see.  A way to lock this page down unless you are the owner may be a good idea for Su.pr to urgently consider.

What if you don’t want to post a Su.pr link just now but later at a certain time? No problem there either.  Su.pr has you covered.  Just use the “schedule for later” option and enter the time you want it sent. Be careful though to choose your correct time zone, though.

That is the basic essence of Su.pr – to give you a way to shorten your links and then track them.  But you would be sorely mistaken if you thought that was the end of it.  Oh no, there’s more so let’s take a look at them all.

First there’s a Worpress plugin.  Apart from being able to have your links posted to Twitter and Facebook,
the plugin also allows you to set up custom domain short URL’s.  So instead of http://Su.pr/ABCD, you can now have http://yourdomain/ABCD.  This is a fantastic development for anyone who does a lot of URL shortening and at the same time wants to promote their blog domain. Just follow the instructions here to find out how to do it.

Another great feature of the Wordpress plugin is that a Stumbleupon toolbar will appear on your domain when someone clicks on a Su.pr URL in one of your blog posts.  This gives them the chance to thumb it up and down and also track the URL at the same time. However there seems to be a big hiccup in this department as stumbling Su.pr links with this toolbar will take you to an error page. It seems that the Su.pr team may have released this option a bit too prematurely.

Having the Stumbleupon toolbar at the top of the domain though will probably be a big boon for webmasters who want to push their content a bit more.   If you put your domain name into your Su.pr settings then when the toolbar shows up, your most popular links will appear in an iframe to the right of the page along with the number of stumbles that link has received.

Su.pr also has an API key so developers who wish to make products around the Su.pr concept will be able to do so. So look out soon for Adobe AIR apps to shorten your links from and iPhone apps.  Although the Su.pr team are already looking at such concepts in their suggestions forum.

For those who like things a little bit simpler, there is also a browser bookmarklet which will make it a bit easier to turn the pages you’re on into Su.pr links.

It’s great how the Stumbleupon team have taken such a common concept such as the short URL and turned it into a tool of many uses, as well as heavily promoting the Stumbleupon service at the same time.  When you think about how former owners eBay were letting Stumbleupon stagnate, it’s good to see the site going back to their original owners and those owners going all out to create something which may in the long term revolutionize the site and the web.  Look at it this way, how many short URL sites are offering all the things that Su.pr is offering and when you look at the suggestions forum, it’s obvious that Su.pr is going to knock out all other rivals at the short URL business.  For a start, the Stumbleupon community is driving it forward with ideas and suggestions on how to improve.

This is something that companies like TinyURL can only dream about.