By Bill Gross
I was very late to the Twitter revolution, only signing up for my account mid last year (2009). As a beginner, I decided to try to Tweet only very unique nuggets, very rarely, and although that worked for me, it was rare enough – a few a month – to not be very engaging to either me, or my small following.
Then late last year and early this year three big events going on in the world changed my life with Twitter.
First was the Copenhagen conference in December. I didn’t attend, but every day the climate sessions were continuing, I was eagerly reading everything that was going on. After the first week, I had some insights, about how there are other important reasons we need to expand our renewable energy besides just climate change. I started thinking about that more and more, and then spent the better part of a day writing a very thoughtful blog post about this, entitled, “It’s not just about Climate Change, it’s about Freedom.” I was very proud of it. I posted it, and then Tweeted it, saying, “With Copenhagen going on right now, I realized renewable energy is not JUST about Climate, it’s about Freedom. Read more at…”
Well, after press TweetIt, I was really excited for all the response I was going to get.
Just a moment later, I went to the Twitter search field and typed in “Copenhagen” and sure enough, there was my Tweet, second from the top, and it said, 10 seconds ago! Yeah!
I couldn’t wait for all the followers and feedback I was going to get from my great Tweet and Blog post.
A moment later I typed in “Copenhagen” again into Twitter, and I was OFF the PAGE!, bumped by things like:
Copehagen sucks, 2 seconds ago.
Where do I find mittens in Copenhagen, 7 seconds ago.
Flying to Copenhagen, 11 seconds ago.
And so on.
Really? I had put ½ day into my thoughtful post and I was gone, bumped by this in just 15 seconds. I thought I could at least get my 15 minutes of fame, not just 15 seconds!
This was my first realization that there needs to be some way for more thoughtful and potentially useful things to survive a little longer on Twitter. Not just for me, who wants to get the word out, but for others, who are looking for valuable insights and information on Twitter.
So the first seed of TweetUp was planted at that point.
That seed blossomed into something much bigger while I was Tweeting from Davos in January and TED in February.
I had the honor of attending the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland. From there, I heard amazing people speak on panels about education, science, the financial crisis, vaccines, and so much more. In every session, I heard such amazing wisdom that I was excited to Tweet, and I did. But there was a 9-hour time difference from California, and unless someone was already following me, all my Tweets were WAY scrolled off the screen by Tweets about snow conditions in Davos, complaints about Davos, and other Tweets that, while valuable to someone, only have a utility for a short period, whereas some of the things going on at the conference I felt had value for a much longer time.
Finally, at TED, I was in the right time zone as the people I wanted to have a conversation with, and I composed hundreds of Tweets over the 4 days of the conference. I started by Tweeting everything interesting I saw or heard, and then tried to do even better by focusing on unique Tweets, or my observations or reactions to events, or to Tweets that added value by providing context, or links, or analysis. Trying to stay above the noise on the #TED feed, I kept that stream open in one column in my client. Doing that, I read EVERY Tweet about TED during TED, all 10,000 in all over the 4 days. Out of the 10,000 Tweets, I’d say about 300 were great, and about 9,700 were noise. The noise included a litany of:
I love TED
I hate TED
TED is great
TED is elitist
TED is bogus
How do I get to TED
Where is TED
Who is TED
What does TED stand for
I can’t find tickets for TED on Craigslist
I envy TED
I dream of TED
Lucky TED
…and so many more
And the great Tweets included moving stories, backstage updates from Bill Gates, insults from Sarah Silverman, and so many more.
I was so immersed in the TED / Twitter experience that I finally truly realized the amazing power of Twitter.
But I also felt overwhelmed at the poor signal-to-noise ratio. If only there were some way to filter out those 9,700 Tweets and only see the 300 great ones.
But how?
Well that was the inspiration of TweetUp!
Our goal with TweetUp is to bring those best Tweets UP to the top of search results.
How can we do that?
Well our idea is to use an algorithm that includes who the Tweet is, how many followers they have, what their Klout/influence score is, how often that Tweet is re-Tweeted, how often the Bit.ly link is followed, and how much the Tweeter bids for that Tweet to be spread.
That last item, the bid, and a bidded marketplace, is maybe the most revolutionary, as we hope to get a very strong signal from Tweeters as to how important and valuable their Tweets are from their bid. The bid will be a price, like $0.01 per impression, for that Tweet to be boosted on particular keywords. Say I Tweet something important on “#Davos – Financial Crisis” and I want that Tweet to be found by people who search for those keywords, I can bid a few cents per impression to get that Tweet to show up higher in the search results. Not at the top, because if the Tweet is not relevant by the other criteria, no bid is high enough to boost it to the top. But at least the bid will be included in the algorithm, which will make great things rise above the noise.
Our goal is to get these new TweetUp search results spread all over Twitter clients and all over the web. Even before we have launched, we have signed a number of distribution deals that bring us more than 40,000,000 unique users and more than ½ billion monthly impressions. But that’s just the beginning. We want to bring great Tweets and Tweeters to all the content and locations that are important to you.
That is our mission – it’s a big one – and we embark on that journey today. We will have lots of challenges, but we are very excited, and we hope you join us on this mission, either as a Tweeter, a reader of Tweets, as a distribution partner, or as a fan. Please write to me with your ideas – Bill@TweetUp.com, and I can’t wait to join the discussion with you.
