drew olanoff dot com

So there’s been a lot of talk about “Authority” as far as Twitter goes this weekend.  To be completely honest, I’ve only paid half attention to the conversation….through Twitter.

Some folks are saying that there should be an “Authority” search option on Twitter search, which would show you results on a search phrase by people who have the most followers.

Bull.

Authority = Reaction.

With every action (tweet), there is a reaction (click and then view).   My example has been Kevin Rose, who tweets a picture of Tea, or a random whatever…I check twitpic and the damn pic has 7,000 views.   That my friends is authority.   Sure, he has 80,000 followers, but if someone who had 7,001 followers and every single person clicked a link they sent, they would then have more authority than Kevin Rose.

It’s not hard to wrap your brains around people.

If Tinyurl (or Twitter themselves) released some type of analtyics tool that published the clickthroughs of whatever you Tweeted (maybe plus retweets, @ replies, etc), we’d get a real authority algorithm based on people.

This is why Twitter is the next Google.

The people are the platform.   I don’t Google as much as I used to.  I do not read Google News or check CNN for my mainstream news anymore.    I find things out on Twitter.  Earthquakes, Political results, Plane crashes, all from my friends…or the people *I* think have authority…aka the people I follow.

The people are the platform.   Not the algorithm.

Watch out Google, your results no matter what search wiki options you offer, will never be as relevant as what I find from the people I trust on Twitter.   Ever.

If I were Twitter I’d never sell.   I’d build.   And build.   And build.