The following is from the short lived FameBall wordpress blog.
@UniteBlue Socks: Drama, Rage and Lies
The existence of fameballs has never been in question. The duration & endurance of a fameball, however, depends on many variables but only one constant: the attraction orbit of the participants. Events & relationships build up, connecting the participants to each other in a unique way. Therein lies the wonder of each fameball.
Some fameballs are visible to the naked eye of an attentive witness while others become visible when exploded from within.
Fameballs based on political sock puppets are a bit different. Since political tweeps are usually not rooted in anonymity, they use services like Klout to assess their relevance & influence on each other. These services provide another source of data by which to profile them.
First, we put in the accounts and their suspected operators
Then we get their first degree influences
We expand out to their second degree influencees
We look for the accounts that have bi-directional links, or ones that form a loop
Then we pull out the topics to see if we can learn anything else
The researchers of Dr. Fameball Labs, Inc are taking an interest in observing the process of active decomposition of this particular fameball. Its genesis is rooted in the Bill Talley Troll War Fameball- in that case, the participants chose to defend & protect a pedophile at the expense of common sense.
At this time, the only constituent parts of the Political Socks Fameball we have been able to conclusively identify are Drama, some Rage, and a great deal of manipulation of facts.
Due to the recent Twitter API upgrade, our Twitter Recorder Machine (TRM for short) is due for an upgrade after which we will start mapping the process of disintegration of this Fameball.
