By now you may have seen a link to TFFRatio on this blog or in the footer of one of the Random* sites. If you've already checked out the site then you know what it's about. If you haven't then here's a little primer.
The idea for the site started with a blog post by a co-worker and friend, Dave Donaldson. Dave stated that a Twitter member's coolness can be determined using a measurement that he came up with (trademarked, copyrighted, patent pending, etc) that is nothing more than a ratio of the people that follow that member to the people that they follow. Someone who follows hundreds of people but only has a few who follow them would have a very low TFF Ratio and thus is not very Twitter-Popular. Someone who has hundreds of followers but only follows (or friends) a few would have a very high TFF Ratio and thus is uber Twitter-Cool.
As part of that post Dave wrote "How long do you think it'll be before someone actually builds a web site/web service that uses the Twitter API to take in a username and returns the TFF Ratio?" Well I considered that to be a personal challenge and within a few minutes I acquired the domain name and posted this parody on the home page. Over the course of the next couple of days I spent a few hours each evening to build out a working site to retrieve a Twitter member's info and calculate the TFF Ratio. Tonight I added a little more polish in the form of pithy comments to go along with the ratings.
While the site started out as a practical joke, I may just run with it. My next step is to build a web service that people can use to retrieve their TFF Ratio. The web service will allow for things like Graffiti Widgets and Community Server add-ons to be written to retrieve and display the TFF Ratio on your blog or profile pages. I may also implement functionality to deliver a full-fledged "official" TFF Ratio badge. I'll keep you updated as the pieces fall into place.
