Thread by @steventey

Twitter just open-sourced their algorithm.

Some initial takeaways:
◆ Your following to follower ratio matters.
◆ @TwitterBlue subscribers do get a boost in the algorithm.

Will keep adding more to this thread 👇

1. Your following-to-follower ratio matters.

Twitter's "Tweepcred" PageRank algorithm reduces the page rank of users who have a low number of followers but a high number of followings.

Source ↓

dub.sh/tweepcred

2. It looks like @TwitterBlue subscribers do get a boost in the algorithm.

Source → dub.sh/twitter-blue-a…

3. Twitter identified 4 different user groups to track & compare how often their tweets are being impressed to users:

◆ Power users
◆ Democrat users
◆ Republican users
◆ @elonmusk

Source → dub.sh/twitter-user-g…

@elonmusk 4. There are a few factors that determine if your tweet will appear on someone's "For You" tab, mainly, the probability the user will:

◆ like/RT your tweet
◆ click into your tweet & reply/stay there for >2 mins
◆ check out your profile 👀

Source → dub.sh/twitter-for-you

5. Some negative feedback loops that will reduce your "reputation score" on Twitter:

◆ Getting blocked
◆ Getting muted
◆ Abuse reports
◆ Spam reports
◆ Unfollows (not as heavily penalized as the above 4 though)

Source → dub.sh/negative-signa…

6. To put these feedback loops in perspective:

A user clicking on your tweet staying there for >2 min is weighted 22x more than them just liking your tweet

If they click into your profile through your tweet & likes/replies to a tweet? 24x more than a like.

If they reply to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

7. When needed, the government can intervene with the Twitter algorithm.

In fact, @TwitterEng even has a class for it – "GovernmentRequested"

Source → dub.sh/twitter-gov-in…

8. Presidential elections is also another big part of the Twitter Algorithm.

It can:
◆ Recommend election candidates to follow: dub.sh/twitter-gov-el…
◆ Suppress misinformation during Election events: dub.sh/twitter-gov-el…

9. So far, I've scoured both the Twitter Algorithm repos but I still haven't found anything about the following:

◆ If a tweet containing a link will be ranked lower
◆ If bookmarking a tweet will boost its rankings

It looks like these are more myths than facts but I'll report… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

10. In the current light ranking model (Earlybird), tweets with images & videos seem to get a nice 2x boost → dub.sh/earlybird-medi…

However, this is an old model that Twitter is planning to rebuild completely, so things might change → dub.sh/earlybird

Update: I added all of the above into the blog post below, will keep updating it as things change.

For example, the 4 user groups tracked by Twitter (point #3) has already been removed in this massive PR: github.com/twitter/the-al…

steventey.com/blog/twitter-a…

Some additional learnings:

11. The algorithm will consider more of your tweets if you have a high TweepCred

E.g. if your TweepCred is <65, the ranking algorithm will only consider up to 3 of your tweets.

But with >65 TweepCred, the limit is lifted.

→ dub.sh/twitter-anti-g…

12. Your tweet's relevancy decreases over time.

At a rate of 50% every 6 hours, to be exact.

→ dub.sh/tweet-decay-sc…

Update: Bookmarks will start weighing as much as likes, if not more: steventey.com/blog/twitter-a…