Bloggers Lose The Plot Over Twitter Search. Wow. Loic Le Meur asks for a simple feature on Twitter search – the ability to filter results by the number of followers that a user has to make sense of thousands of messages – and the blogosphere calls for his head. For the record, I agree with Loic. Being able to filter search results, if you choose, by the number of followers a user has makes sense. Without it, you have no way of knowing which voices are louder and making a bigger impact. Of course, I’m pretty sure I can live without this feature, too. Robert Scoble: “Here’s why it’s a stupid idea: everyone is gaming the number of followers. Dave Winer: “I think it’s a bad idea.” Sarah Lacy: “No one could be this nakedly egotistical and self-serving.” Steven Hodson: “some-one like me with next to no followers wouldn’t even rate showing up in search results even if I started to topic being searched for” [no, only if someone turned that filter on in the search] Sam Harrelson: “I think this is a terrible idea.”
Etc. SarahLacy.com: Controversy at Le Web? Sacre Bleu! I had to skip this year's Le Web conference, and I have to say, as much as I enjoyed it last year, on Monday I was so happy not to be jet lagged (again) and cold. (Well, colder than it is in my non-heated house. Brrrrrrr!) Of course, when I travel to conferences I never get the posh treatment of Michael Arrington, who has apparently picked a fight with Loic about American vs. European entrepreneurs. Loic answers back here. As someone who has gone on four trips to Europe in the last year and has met with hundreds of entrepreneurs, here are my thoughts.
First, Loic is right when he says at the end of the post that this is no longer an interesting or meaningful debate. "...the joy of life is great, but all these two hour lunches over a bottle or two of great wine and general unwillingness to do whatever it takes to compete and win is the reason why all the big public Internet companies are U.S. based. I couldn't agree with Michael more. Perhaps Loic just needs new friends in the Valley? Joie De Vivre. I write this from a hotel room at Newark airport in New Jersey. I’m half way home from a wonderful week in Paris at the Le Web conference where I mingled with 1,700 or so attendees. My mood: jetlagged, sated and cranky.
My week was spent in luxury. I was treated to a business class flight to Paris, a stay at one of the nicest hotels in the city, and at least three of the best meals I’ve had since the last Le Web conference in 2007. I’m still a little dazed after a five hour, fourteen course dinner last night at Restaurant Guy Savoy, my first foray into a Michelin three star restaurant, for example. Life is good in Paris. The conference agenda was packed with excellent content. As an American I found that I was treated more warmly than any time I’ve visited Europe in the last few years. But Europe’s persistent background pessimism was out in full force, even at an event full of entrepreneurs.
Two hour lunches are great. Controversy. Should M.Arrington Be Invited Back? <a href =" >Should Michael Arrington be invited again at LeWeb next year? </a><br /><span style="font-size:9px;"> (<a href =" polls</a>)</span> I have received many emails and comments from European friends asking me why I invite Michael Arrington with so much stage presence and such a behavior. They blame Michael for behaving the way he did several times on stage. There are plenty of examples such as asking me to leave the stage with Marissa Mayer or calling me a lier (somewhere in the video seems Michael forgot he called us lazy) when I argue I never said “europeans are lazy” in a post about going global on his own site.
Michael focuses on my “we know how to take quality time in Europe” and my example of a two hour lunch versus five minutes at starbucks if you are lucky. Seriously, imagine the scene of having Michael Arrington trapped in one of the best art Europe has to offer, French haute cuisine. Meetic inShare0. Censorship! As a response to my on-stage comments and this post about entrepreneurial culture in Europe, Le Web organizer Loic Le Meur is asking readers if I should be “invited back at Le Web next year.”
As of the writing of this post, nearly 2/3 of respondents say no, I should not be invited to return. If that’s how the European startup community wants to deal with criticism, C’est la vie. We sent five writers to Le Web this year to cover the startups presenting there and other tech news. Perhaps next year we’ll send none. But I do think this is a dangerous precedent. I expected more from the European community. New controversy. Leaders duty is to grow idea ! We Need Search By Authority. There were more than 7000 tweets posted during the two days of LeWeb, no way anyone can read them quickly.
We need filtering and search by authority. We’re not equal on Twitter, as we’re not equal on blogs and on the web. I am not saying someone who has more followers than yourself matters more, but what he says has a tendency to spread much faster. Comments about your brand or yourself coming from @techcrunch with 36000 followers are not equal than someone with 100 followers. Most people use Twitter with a few friends, but when someone who has thousands, if not tens of thousands of followers starts to speak, you have to pay attention. Brands do pay attention and already start understanding the difference. We made the experiment with Ben Metcalfe.
What we need is search by authority in Twitter Search. InShare0.