Is there value in being on the SUL? 

I think it's self-evident that there is a lot of value in being on Twitter's Suggested User List, especially for publications that run ads on the pages they link to from posts to Twitter. And many of the most-followed Twitter users do that. You can see that if you look at the main 100TWT site, the posts of the 100 most popular Twitter users.

http://100TWT.com/

I wrote this app so I could get a sense of how these feeds were being used. Some even run outright ads in their feeds, not links to pages that have ads. AdventureGirl, with 493K followers, is an excellent example.

Some people have said that being on the SUL is like being linked to, but I don't think so. There is no web equivalent to the SUL. It's as if Google seeded their search engine so that every web newbie, when they searched for anything, got 20 of 200 sites in every response. There would be no correlation between the sites returned and the query. Further, the power of these initial sites in recommending other sites would be almost absolute. New users wouldn't have any other way to find things on the web other than the first few sites they got in their very first Google search. It's so out-there that it's hard to even explain, the web could never have worked that way, people simply wouldn't have gotten the point.

Another experiment would be to walk around the office and ask every Twitter user if they would mind having more followers. Don't say why you're asking, just ask. If they all say they don't care how many people follow them, I'll buy every one of them a bagel next time I'm in town.

I couldn't discuss this on Twitter because there's no way to explore any subtle subject 140 characters at a time. But I'm willing to discuss it here, as long as we're uncovering new ideas, and not rehashing stuff.

Note: I originally wrote this piece to reference a specific organization, but on reflection I think it works better if it it's general. These are my opinions, I don't present them as gospel, as always your mileage may vary.

Discussions in Twitter, day 2 

Yesterday I soft-launched a little project I'm working on called twdsc.us. Today the service gets a little more real, because now you can create discussions around tweets too, and not just your own tweets, anyone's. In other words, this could get interesting.

For example, I just started a small discussion around a post by WNYC's Brian Lehrer. Apparently they had a power outage, and that's interfering with all kinds of things, including their ability to post a podcast. Maybe someone in the community can help.

And if you look in the right margin of that page, you'll see a very brief HowTo explaining how to create your own discussion pages. If you have any questions, post them here, and I'll build how this blog post and turn it into documentation.

PS: A million thanks to the guys at Disqus who provide a wonderful and flexible tool, and support it like pros.