It may be a really antisocial way to go for some people, but a fix was sugested to me.
The meter seems to jump more when you have a lot of friends...each time someone in ur friends list joins or leaves the meter does the funky chicken ! I deleted nearly all in my list (about 100) and have experienced very smooth meter action ever since. I realised this goes against the whole point of a comunity based site but perhaps WGT should look into this side of the possible meter glitch.