Twitter To Start Deciding How Valuable Your Tweets Are

No more tweeting about our mundane existences, fellow tweeps. Twitter announced this week that starting Wednesday, February 20, it will start attaching value ratings to users’ tweets.

In a post to Twitter’s Developers blog, Arne Roomann-Kurrik introduces the new “metadata for tweets” function, which will designate your tweets with a value rating of “none,” “low,” “medium,” and eventually, “high.” But it’s not to hurt your feelings. According to Roomann-Kurrik, the valuation system will help developers more selectively curate the massive deluge of status updates constantly going up on Twitter.

It’s not readily clear how tweets will be valued, even through the dense tech-speak Roomann-Kurrik uses in the post. It seems as though the “medium” and “high” posts will be something like “Top Tweets,” which you get as results when you search popular words or hashtags on the microblog service.

If so, then tweets that attract engagement or those from users with large followings will be given preference, as opposed the the current “Wild West” non-sorting.

Though valued tweets will make Twitter’s streaming API more useful to developers, the function might not go over well with some users who may fear their tweets will be drowned out by those with higher followings. It will benefit users in terms of receiving content – only the best content will find its way to your feed.

But that’s also the function’s biggest downside, because it could prove problematic for those wishing to push out content. Twitter will basically be “judging” your tweets rather invasively, partially based on your number of followers. That there could end up constituting a monopoly of content.

It could arguably make it harder for emerging social personalities to make a name for themselves online. I know, boo hoo, but how would you like your tweets to lose exposure?

You can follow the Twitter blog discussion on valued tweets here, and let them know what you think of the new function. But let us know as well: Does this new service sound obnoxious, or useful?