WeFollow – A People Powered Directory

Kevin Rose, founder of Digg , has created a powerful little weekend side project called WeFollow.com , a user-powered directory for Twitter.

The tool allows Twitter users to associate themselves with up to three tags which identify their expertise. Twitter will then index

WeFollow.com

the account under the appropriate category on WeFollow.com. It’s all very cool.

Kevin is an investor in Twitter, (which goes to prove the deep ties among all of the Silicon Valley/San Francisco boys go), does what he can to help Twitter according to a Digg spokesperson.

WeFollow.com has searchers index themselves as experts in a specific topic. For example, I’ve tagged myself “Journalist”, “SocialMedia” and “Alcohol”. The directory will help users identify themselves, but will also be able to connect like-minded individuals and provide valuable data for marketers looking to target certain verticals and specific influencers through word of mouth marketing.

MediaPost spoke with Forrester Research Senior Analyst Jeremiah Owyang who makes an extremely valid point – at the moment, there is no way to judge the authority of a self-tagged user because it’s based solely on followers. He suggests that WeFollow needs to rely on historical data that matches the person with specific topics mentioned in tweets, as well as retweets on previous posts. [source ]

There are a few ways that marketers can best use these user powered directories like WeFollow and one launched about three weeks ago, TweeplePages.com. At this point in time, marketers can search for people by interest, sports or whatever their specific product is and reach out to the key influencers in their specific categories. They can list themselves in their appropriate category  as well and label themselves as “MarketingPR” and, for example “alcohol”. They’d then find me listed under “journalist” and “alcohol” and voila – they pitch me (appropriately, I’d hope).  Eventually, the speculation is that WeFollow will create sponsored listings and advertising opportunities for people.

I’m going to be very interested in seeing where this site goes. I do think it’s rather brilliant however.