Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Chrome Extension Surfaces Most Relevant Tweets Based on Your Reading Habits

by Ben Parr

My6sense has launched a Google Chrome extension for Twitter.com, designed to make it easier to find a user’s most relevant tweets while filtering out the junk.
My6sense is a platform that takes streams of data (primarily RSS) and tracks your reading behavior in order to figure out which content you like the most. It then bring stories it anticipates you’ll like to the top of your stream while burying the rest, utilizing an algorithm it calls “Digital Intuition.” The company launched its iPhone app in 2009 and debuted its Android app and Attention API last year.
My6sense for Twitter.com, launching today as a Google Chrome extension, adds a new “my6sense” menu item to the Twitter.com homepage. It utilizes the same underlying technology as its iPhone and Android apps to figure out which tweets you’re mostly likely to find relevant and bring them to the top of your stream. Instead of having to read through thousands of mundane tweets from the people you follow, my6sense chooses a small selection of tweets you’re likely interested in, based on your previous reading habits.
My6sense for Twitter.com has four filter options that only surface the most relevant tweets from the last six, 12, 24 and 48 hours. Unlike the Twitter timeline, my6sense doesn’t order tweets chronologically, but by relevancy.
While my6sense has garnered attention for its ability to detect personally relevant content, the Chrome extension is not perfect. The best results will be achieved by regular users of my6sense because the service already knows what type of content they are interested in reading. The Twitter.com extension also has a bias towards tweets with links. That makes sense (links tend to be the most useful part of any tweet), but that bias might bury something like an important life update from your friend.
The need for a Twitter filter is there though, especially as more content is produced on Twitter and more people use it as their primary source of news. Removing the tweets about making sandwiches in favor of articles concerning the Egypt crisis could make the life of a busy professional just a little easier. My6sense hopes to bring its Twitter relevancy filter to other browsers (like Firefox) and to other platforms in the near future.

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