Ask HN: What's your Twitter rank?

Why does it need a password? twitter.grader.com does essentially the same thing, but doesn't require a password. I'm not sure what additional data the author gets by using the Twitter API vs. just looking at the public info (I can't think of any part of my Twitter stats that aren't publicly available)

It uses a lot of info, including the who you've replied to (and who has replied to you). That alone requires authentication, IIRC.

Which end of the spectrum is "good"? I got a 106.49: http://twitterank.com/?u=notoriousbrk

That number could have been randomly generated from all I can tell about the tool.

Remember the study where people gave away their passwords for a candy bar? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/20/password_surveys/

That would clearly not work with the HN community. Instead, we need a geeky screen with a disclaimer and the promise of learning how we rank compared to others.

What's next? gmailrank?

A friend of mine who is an engineer at Google wrote this up. It uses Real Math(tm), so it calculates your TwitterRank by taking into account how you interact with other Twitter users.

Mine is 17.2, which surprises me.