26 Jan 09 I think I have developed a Twitter aggregator finder

Blocking aggregators from Tweetsnet is turning in to a whack-a-mole game.  As I block them, others pop up – and some of them are brand-new accounts.  This means I’ll have to prioritize creating an algorithm to block them rapidly.  Weird stuff pops into the feed, like a series of wrestling-related posts.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a couple of experimental vertical feeds, on web analytics and social media, since I’m interested in those subjects and I suspect they get a fair bit of attention from Twitter users.

Looking at the most common phrases that Tweetsnet is finding, it seems that the most talked about subjects are the generally popular ones – President Obama, the Super Bowl, peanut butter, Steve Jobs and “Slumdog Millionaire.”  But that may be becuase I’ve only recently pared down the aggregators.  We’ll see what develops.

It seems to me that Twitter is related to blogs and search engines as radio has been related to newspapers.  Radio was usually first to cover breaking news; newspapers covered the same events in greater depth.  I’m using past tense because radio and newspapers are changing these days, already fairly different from when I worked in those businesses.