

Ask HN: Review our new feature - Most Popular iPhone Apps on Twitter - iseff
http://www.appstorehq.com/iphone-apps-twitter

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cpr
Hmm, more like "iPhone apps with obnoxious auto-Twitter self-promotion
features". ;-)

~~~
iseff
Yeah, we're wrestling with the best way to handle this right now.

On one hand, retweeting and repeating tweets is a perfectly acceptable -- and
standard -- way of "voting" via Twitter, and we want to respect and appreciate
that.

On the other hand, apps that send out links to their app liberally should
probably be punished.

There's obviously a balance to be found somewhere in the middle. Our model of
weighting scores based on users and their friends/followers counts helps out
somewhat -- most people who are 'popular' Twitter users are less likely to
spam their followers.

A couple ideas we've had -- and we'd certainly love any feedback -- are:

1) Anytime we see multiple tweets following the same pattern, discount
everyone but the first by some weight (say, 50%). This will keep them
relevant, but dampen their impact.

2) Keep a list of API clients which are known to be in-app clients, such as
MGTwitterEngine, and either discount their weight or remove them entirely.

