Can you do a better job than an algorithm in evaluating which tweets are more popular than others? If so, now’s your chance to prove it. Learn from some automated evaluations in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Predicting Success on Twitter

Computer scientists Chenhao Tan, Lillian Lee, and Bo Pang have built an algorithm that answers a simple question: Which version of a tweet containing the same URL and written by the same user would be the most retweeted?

To do this, they devised a means of judging the versions that succeeds at predicting more often than the average human and many social media professionals do.

So if you’re willing to put your social media prowess on the line, take this quiz, via the New York Times’ “Upshot,” and see if you can tell which tweet was more successful.

Over the course of the quiz, you’ll notice some recurring elements: Positivity often results in more retweets, as do interesting nuggets of information that can hold their own regardless of the link. And for some users, of course, clearly asking for retweets results in more retweets.

Staying in the Loop With Vine

If your association wants to experiment with social tools beyond the standard suite of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, Vine is as good a place to start as any. The app, which is built around short, easily shared video loops, was purchased by Twitter in 2012.

To provide a better perspective on each video’s performance, Vine is adding a more extensive analytics suite with Loop, which counts how many times videos have been played or embedded. As always, quality matters more than clicks, but it’s always nice to get a better sense of how well your social efforts are succeeding.

(Illustration via Pete Simon)