Twitter Made It's Algorithm Public - Here's what you need to know...
What you can learn about Twitter from it's algorithm being released.
If you are a brand, business, publisher or creator and looking to use this post on your blog, newsletter, website, social media or other digital property, you can license this piece here.
Hello hi!! How are you? I’m good except the fact that Sam Altman has had 9 years and $11b to change the world and all he’s delivered is a chatbot and an image generator that can’t do hands! Imagine what you could do with 9 years and $11b. ANYWAY!
Elon made the Twitter algorithm public! I didn’t have this information about Twitter’s algorithm when I worked there for 4 years. But now I do! There’s a ton of great learnings in here about how the platform works and how you can use it to your advantage. I’m breaking down the top learnings so you don’t have to learn to code! yay!
Once you send a tweet, Twitter’s algorithm boosts your tweet to users depending on a variety of factors. If you understand how the algorithm works, you can understand how to grow your reach and followers on the platform.
At a high level, here’s what you should know.
1. “Likes” give your tweets a 30x boost.
You should optimize for likes, then retweets.
2. Twitter Blue Extends Your Reach
Whatever you think about paying Twitter $8/month, the algorithm really doesn’t care. It will have an impact on your performance.
3. Images + Videos Help
Be sure to include images and videos in your tweets. Be sure to include text with your images and videos. Not having any text hurts the performance.
4. Links Hurt Performance
If you are announcing something and want to have a link, your best bet is to tweet the announcement with an image or video and then reply with the link/CTA.
5. Spell check your tweets - don’t make up words
Misspellings hurt performance. and don’t made up languages.
6. Your account age and follower-to-following ratio matters.
Twitter’s “Tweepcred” PageRank algorithm reduces your page rank for users with a low number of followers but a high number of followings. See here.
You are assigned a numerical score based on the # and quality of interactions you have with other Twitter users - the higher the score, the more influential the user is on Twitter. Your reputation score is based on factors like your account’s age, number of followers and device usage.
If you have plans to create a business or venture, you should create an account as soon as possible and start to engage with other accounts with it.
7. Your tweet’s best performance happens within the first 6 hours
Tweets have a half life of 360 minutes, or 6 hours. This means a tweet’s relevancy score decreased by 50% every 6 hours. If you have a launch and want to stay relevant, you should be tweeting every 6 hours.
8. Your network on Twitter matters
Your tweet will appear on someone’s “For You” tab if the user, likes/RT your tweets, clicks into your tweet, replies and stays there for longer than 2 minutes or clicks on your tweet and looks at your profile.
Twitter has 145k communities called “SimClusters”. Through our tweets, tweets we interact with and who interacts with our tweets, we are placed in these communities. The more members of certain communities like one of your tweets, the more that tweet will be associated and served to that community. The best Twitter users have a strong POV, engage with their followers often and create relevant content that the communities they want to reach are interacting with.
9. People should spend more than 2 minutes on your tweet
A user clicking on your tweet and staying there for longer than 2 minutes is weighted 22x more than just liking your tweet. This means, if you want to like someone else’s tweet and you want to help the performance, you should click on the tweet, like it, spend two minutes on the tweet and reply to the tweet.
Another thing that helps? Click on the tweet, go to their profile and look at/ like their other tweets.
10. Reply to your Tweet replies.
If you reply to a reply on your tweet, this is weighted 150x more than a like.
11. Blocks, Mutes + Reports really hurt performance
Try not to upset anyone with your tweets. While I know this is hard, it will tank performance if anyone blocks, mutes, “show tweets from this person less often”, or reports your tweet. Especially copyright and trademark violations! Hopefully this is not weaponized for nefarious purposes 😳
The best performing tweets will be those with text, images or a video from a Twitter Blue user who has had their account for years, with a big following and regularly engages with this following (including in the replies).
There’s a ton of accounts breaking down this info on Twitter, here are a few: @steventey + @aakashg0
Is there anything else you’re curious about? Let me know in the comments.
Happy Tweeting!
—
Liz Hagelthorn is a social-first storyteller and meme-maker with a diverse background in meme culture, technology, and organic virality. Liz is the CEO and Co-Founder of PostMarket, a licensing platform for social and digital content. Liz is best known for leading creative for the largest pseudonymous meme network on Instagram, overseeing creative strategy across 127 accounts with 300M followers and reaching 1.2B people per month. Most notably, Liz was the face and creator behind the @girl account. She led the network’s acquisition in under two years.
Liz has held positions at Google and Twitter, and works with high-profile startups and celebrities to develop viral organic growth strategies, Liz graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley. Follow her on Twitter @lizhagelthorn.