Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Kevin Leneway
Two weeks ago I joined up with about 150 of my fellow Seattle geeks for the second annual Seattle Startup Weekend . Besides having a ridiculously good time, I also came across a couple of damn good startup ideas during the final presentation on Sunday evening. One of my favorites was a pretty little Twitter-based app called TweetSum . For all you Twitter users out there, TweetSum tackles a very niche problem that I’m sure many of you are familiar with. You open up your mailbox and get hit with one of those “ someRandomDude is now following you on Twitter!” messages. That’s cool – but how do you know if someRandomDude is worth following back?
That’s where TweetSum comes in. After providing your Twitter info, the app analyzes your follower/following relationships and presents three columns: New, Following, and Meh. Users that are following you (but who you aren’t currently following) are presented in the “New” column, and are ranked according to their DBI (more on that in a minute). Clicking on a user brings up some relevant information about them, such as their DBI, their profile info/pic, the number of followers/followees, recent tweets and replies, and guidance around how likely they are to reply to their followers. Once you decide if you should follow them, you then have the option to “Follow Back” or to toss ‘em into the “Meh” bucket.
Along with just presenting the info, the TweetSum team came up with an algorithm to give some guidance as to whether or not you should follow this person. This is a number from 1 to 100 known as the DBI, which stands for (and I swear I am not making this up) the Douche Bag Index. The team doesn’t reveal the secret behind the DBI, but it’s likely based on things such as the ratio of following/followers, average number of Tweets per day, etc.. Whatever it is, I have to say that it’s pretty darn impressive – I went through my list from the top down and ignored the majority of the high DBIs, while digging through the low DBIs revealed a few new tweeps that I wanted to follow.
Besides being a useful tool for improving your Twitter experience, the interface is gorgeous and very fun to use. The best part is some nifty little Javascript magic that shoots users from one bucket to another with a slick animation and a satisfying little shake. It’s hard to describe without playing around with it, but it’s one of the most fun and elegant online apps I’ve seen in a very long while.
