TweetLevel may boost your ego but I trust the cat

OPINION: Last week we established that I'm socially inept so this week I figured I'd have one last crack at my tattered self-esteem by checking out TweetLevel, a site that decides whether you really matter out there in TwitterLand, writes Jillian Allison-Aitken in this week's Online.

It works by giving users a ranking out of 100 in four categories – influence, popularity, engagement and trust – to arrive at a final score.

People like Stephen Fry, Ashton Kutcher and Neil Gaiman make up the lofty top echelons of the list but I was stunned, devastated and somewhat twitchy to discover celeb blogger Perez Hilton has a higher trust level than me. Come on, this is the dude who, upon hearing the breaking news that Michael Jackson had died, suggested on his blog that he was faking it.

Hrrrmph. I reckon the TweetLevel people need to rethink their scoring system.

Besides, I know I matter in the real world (Seymour the Wonder Cat would have to train someone else to operate his food bowl if I wasn't around, so I know I matter to him).

If you really want to be depressed about your self-worth (and let's be honest, isn't that everyone's dream?), beautifulpeople.com is just the place for you.

According to a news story this week (http://is.gd/52YGa), New Zealand men are hot but Kiwi women are not.

The site allows only beautiful people to join, with new applicants being rated by site users over 48 hours. If they are good-looking, they get to sign up with all the other beautiful people.

It seems that fewer than one in five New Zealand women made the cut but one in three blokes were deemed suitable.

Overall, Swedish men are ranked as the most attractive and Kiwi men are in sixth place, Norwegian women are ranked No1 but New Zealand's sheilas don't even hit the top 10.

I don't know about any of that, and I thought the two "beautiful people" on the front page of the site looked like something out of an ad for toothpaste, condoms or one of those (ahem) fibre supplements, but I do know this: Seymour the Wonder Cat thinks I'm beautiful. Even if it is only because I have worked out how to open his cat bikkies for him.

Now, I wonder if there's a "crazy cat lady" ranking site?

» Jillian Allison-Aitken is a senior staff member at The Southland Times and was named best internet and communications technology columnist at the 2008 Qantas Awards.

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