Twitter Chooses the TIME Person of the Year -- Or Does It?

TIME magazine has partnered with Twitter to allow readers to vote for the 2013 Person Of The Year and using the #TIMEPOY hashtag. Voting is open until December 4, 2013. The question is, what’s the point when the ultimate decision lies with TIME, and they’ve dismissed reader votes before?

TIME is keeping track of the votes on TIME.com, the hashtag, @replies and tweets sent to @TIME using Poptip, a social media analysis tool. The claimed purpose is to make sure all cast votes are accounted for.

Poptip is using tournament style voting and Twitter’s new visual timeline will be used extensively during the voting campaign to engage users to share their opinions.