Jack, notice that all the links on the mudcat Twitter account are bit.ly links. This tracks the traffic from twitter to mudcat very specifically. For instance, your thread on sessions was clicked 6 times, the Peggy Seeger thread was clicked on 27 times, etc.

The goal, Jack, is the accessibility of our information and the collection of more. Our most active threads (no BS) are tweeted to alert the people that might not be checking us everyday as to what is being discussed. As you see by my previous post, we have an offer of more information on Gaelic laments. Good stuff.

Google and Bing are now modifying their search results to include social networking activity as a factor of timely relevance. They're referring to it as "real-time" search. Their assumption, admittedly a myopic response to buzz, is that if something is being "shared" or tweeted that it is more relevant than something that is not.

They are also using social networking activity as an agent of folksonomy, which is a system of classification. Meaning, that with a carefully controlled social networking strategy, they will learn more and more everyday that we are a folk site, and not a BS site, and our search results will be more focussed, thereby decreasing the very activity that you all seem so afraid of.

Fin.