BrandsAmongMany

Well, first, what’s “competitive commenting”? It’s the name we’ve coined here at POKE for the trend of “discussion as game/competition” that we’ve seen growing across the web. What started in the comment sections of blogs and other sites like YouTube has grown to include new experiences specifically dedicated to creating competitions out of digital interaction.

We introduced the idea of competitive commenting when we launched Embrace Your Grace, a blog-like fan site for TNT’s Saving Grace that offers up a point-counterpoint discussion about some of the hard-hitting topics presented in the show, and allows readers to vote for either side and submit thoughts of their own.

Tengaged is another prime example. Essentially a digital version of the popular show Big Brother, Tengaged groups ten players into a room where their conversations and interactions within the group become their basis for staying in the game. Those who don’t add value get “voted off”.

Edopter, which we’ve discussed over at ThingsAmongMany, is yet another example. While not a direct competition where someone gets voted out, Edopter has created a “game” in which users are valued based on their predictions of upcoming trends. The more people who agree with a prediction, the more influence the user gains within the system.

Of course, those are both specific sites that require a user to maintain involvment with yet-another social network - a practice that many of us are reaching critical overload with. But what if this notion of competitive commenting could be expanded to include something that we’re already using? What if, say, your tweets - the comments that you’re making already anyway (you ARE on Twitter, right?) - became the mechanism by which the competition were measured? Well, now they can.

Hubspot recently launched Twitter Grader, a new service that pits you against everyone else on Twitter to determine your score (out of 100) compared to the rest of the field. Yup, these guys have successfully created a scoring system to turn Twitter into a game. *AmongMany is currently chugging along with a 63, but hopefully that will increase in the near future as we continue to post content and gain followers.

So how do they measure your worth? According to Hubspot’s VP of Marketing, Mike Volpe, the system takes into consideration:

1. Number of followers
2. Number of followers that your followers have (the power of your network)
3. Quantity and pace of updates
4. Additional proprietary analysis (this is the super secret algorithmic stuff generator part)

Of course, Hubspot isn’t the first to consider grading Twitter users. The now-defunct TweeterBoard offered similar functionality. And this app called TwitterGrade offers a more tongue-in-cheek response to your query, though it does embrace the question of ego theat should be considered by anyone willing to look up their own grade on Twitter. Definitely worth a chuckle.