Fun Size Bytes (from @Tj)

Q: Why does Favrd only see 20 favorites at a time? A: blame Twitter, not Dean

It has recently been discussed that Favrd only sees some of your favorites.

The incorrect assessment was that Favrd only sees 20 stars per day which Mr. Wineman, linked above, clarified is false:

Not per day. It’s 20 stars per hour, or per whatever interval Favrd checks your favorites at. (I think this varies from user to user.) So just don’t go crazy with the stars and you’ll be OK.

Dean told me this in person, so unless he’s changed the way it works in the past few weeks, it’s fairly reliable intel.

It does indeed vary per person, but (and I don’t think this is a secret) if you give more, you get checked more frequently, however that doesn’t necessarily mean that if you start throwing out 200 stars an hour, you’ll start getting checked every minute.

Why 20?

Well, here’s my attempt at a non-technical explanation of something fairly technical. It’s not intended to be condescending, I’m just trying to simplify something that isn’t particularly obvious:

According to the official Twitter documentation, checking for Favorites via the API (the way that I assume Favrd does):

Returns the 20 most recent favorite statuses for the authenticating user or user specified by the ID parameter in the requested format.

Translation “Twitter says: every time you ask me for User X’s favorites, I’ll show you the last 20.”

(Note: that’s the last 20 which were posted not the last 20 which you favorited. So if you favorite 22 posts and the 21st and 22nd ones were originally posted 2-3 hours ago, you may not ever see that show up on Favrd.)

Twitter gives Favrd 20, so Favrd records 20.

Other parts of Twitter will let you say: “Hey, the last time I asked you for information, you gave me all the information update number 3,587,492,723. How about you now give me everything that has happened since then?”

However, the favorites part of the API does not work that way.

You could go back through and say “Ok, I got those 20, give me another 20” but then you would have to find some way to track which was the last one that you received, and keep going back, and back, and back.” That adds extra programming effort, especially since Twitter isn’t making it any easier (and limits the number these types of requests that you can make).

So (I assume) Dean made a practical decision and said, “I’m going to balance the limited access that Twitter gives me, and check periodically with all the registered users of Favrd to see what they’ve favorited. If they favorite a lot, I’ll check them more often.” It’s a trade-off.

Favstar seems to have taken a different approach, which is that they are trying to go back through every user (not just every “registered with Favstar” user), and they do seem to be trying to record every star, regardless of how many you throw out there.

If I am right (and I may be wrong), Favstar seems an untenable solution. They are going to find more and more people to check, but it’s going to take longer and longer to make it through the entire cycle. (I assume this is why Favstar tends to find more stars, but be slower, than Favrd.)

Twitter.com limits the number of these types of requests you can make per hour. Since Favrd has a smaller (self-selected) group of people who have “opted in” to the service, they can check more frequently. Favstar can check more thoroughly.

Which is “better”?

Probably whichever one you prefer :-)

That said, when I see that something on Favstar has almost 100 stars, but only 20 on Favrd, I assume this is because the person is being followed by a lot of “bots” (multiple Twitter accounts run by the same person) which are throwing a lot of stars, but doesn’t really have the same “weight” as what you see on Favstar.

What I have tended to notice on average is that Favstar finds slightly more stars (60 instead of 55, 100 instead of 95, 20 instead of 18) unless you are looking at the same few posts at the very top of the Favrd leaderboard, at which point it may find 150 instead of 120… but it found them three days after it was posted, and the #1 post that day on Favrd is still the #1 post that day on Favstar, the numbers are just different.

Favrd’s “sign up” method works really well because people who tend to like throwing up stars are naturally going to find out about it, and sign up, and be counted. Considering Twitter’s growth, I don’t see how Favstar will be able to keep up, except to form some kind of an (unofficial) “members” list.

The accusations that Favrd is somehow “elite” is absurd. Anyone can sign up. Anyone’s votes can be counted. And, really, if you are routinely throwing up more than 20 stars per hour (or whatever the exact interval is), I think the meaning of the word “favorite” has been sufficiently diluted to the point of being fairly meaningless.

(Noted exception: sometimes early in the morning and late at night I will read back through 8-10 hours worth fairly quickly, and I could see myself exceeding 20 in that scenario. If you want to keep your favorites counted, you have to keep up during the day.)

I find some of the histrionics about this whole issue to be fairly disappointing. Both of these sites are offering you a free service. Dean especially has been accused of a whole lot of unfortunate things recently, by some people who I think don’t really understand how things work at a technical level.