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Monday, October 13, 2008

BarackObama followers

Twitter User BarackObama has an incredible amount of followers. This Twitter account follows every Twitter user that follows BarackObama. Currently Twitter User BarackObama is following over 100,000 other Twitter users. A rough estimation of the number of Twitter messages per day per users can be made of two sources. Twiturly scans between 200,000 and 250,000 Twitter messages per day, TwitDir reports 3.18 million Twitters users. This leads to the following calculations.

Number of Twitter Users (TwitDir) : 3,183,544
Daily Twitter messages (Twiturly) : 200,000 - 250,000
Number of Twitter messages per day and user : 0,063 - 0,079
BarackObama followers : 101.350
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per day : 6.367 - 7.959
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per hour : 265 - 332
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per minute : 4.4 - 5.5

It seems quite unlikely that Barack Obama himself would read all these Twitter messages. I even doubt it that a single person is capable of reading all these messages (5 per minute, 24 hours per day).

Twinfluence

Influence of a Twitter account does not solely depends on the number of people who are following the Twitter account. It also depends on the size of the network of the followers of Twitter account. Twinfluence applies the concept of social capital to propose a set of new influence measures for Twitter users (from the about page).

Reach: Reach is the number of followers a Twitterer has (first-order followers), plus all of their followers (second-order followers). Reach is a measurement of potential audience and listeners, a best estimate of the number of people that a given Twitterer could quickly get a message to.

Velocity: Velocity merely averages the number of first- and second-order followers attracted per day since the Twitterer first established their account. The larger the number is, the faster that Twitterer has accumulated their influence. Of course, this number could jump significantly with the addition of a few high-profile followers.

Social Capital: Tthe average first-order network of a Twitterer's followers. A high value indicates that most of that Twitterer's followers have a lot of followers themselves.

Centralization: This is a measure of how much a Twitterer's influence (reach) is invested in a small number of followers. Centralization scores range from 0% (completely decentralized) to a theoretical 100% (completely dependent on one Twitterer).

Efficiency: The more people you follow, the more time you have to spend reading and filtering tweets. Efficiency is a measure of how many people a Twitterer had to follow in order to build up their reach, as a percentage.

A few examples to illustrate these new influence measures.

BarackObama, the most followed Twitter user


SteveRubel, a digital marketer working at Edelman Digital


TwitFacts, the Twitter user I created for this blog



These new influence measures are interesting. They have however also their limitations. Influence should be measured for persons. Barack Obama uses various channels to illustrate his influence : speaches, debates, personal encounters, his website, his Twitter account, … On a lower scale everyone is active on different channels. Steve Rubel writes on his blog, he writes columns, he speaks at various events, he works for various clients as a digital marketer at Edelman Digital. On addition to that, he has a stream of Twitter messages. Influence can be measured for each of these channels : number of blog posts linking to Steve Rubel's blog, number of readers and comments on his columns, number of speaking engagements, number of Edelman clients wanting to work with him, ... All these measures are only capable of capturing a tiny aspect of someone's influence. Influence should ideally be measured for a person, not for a specific channel. Twinfluence is however an interesting approach for a specific domain for which no influence measures were available.

Twinfluence uses a clever way to deal with the Twitter API. All requests to the Twitter API are performed with the Twitter user credentials supplied by the user. After several queries, there is a big risk that a user will receive this error message :

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Twitter Top 100 lists compared

In a previous post (Top Twitter Users) I listed several sites where lists of top Twitter users can be found. I wanted to get an idea on the quality of these lists. Do they contain the same Twitter users ? Do they provide the same data ?

I considered four top lists of Twitter users ranked by the number of followers.
1. Twitdir Top 100 followed : number 1 on the list has 94937 followers, there are 6586 followers for number 100
2. Twittercounter The top 100 most popular Twitter users : number 1 on the list has 94600 followers, there are 7156 followers for number 100
3. Twitterholic Top 100 based on Followers : number 1 on the list has 94894 followers, there are 6562 followers for number 100
4. Twittown Top 150 followers (only first 100 considered) : number 1 on the list has 6941 followers, there are 986 followers for number 100

The four lists combined count 179 different Twitter users. It is clear that the top 100 list from Twittown is outdated. Twitter user @BarackObama has only 5441 followers according to Twittown, in reality this Twitter user has 94937 followers.

Let's compare the three other list. The three lists combined cound 122 different Twitter users, see table below.

Twitdir has the highest values for number of followers. Twittercounter has the lowest values.
* If Twitdir is compared to Twitterholic, the differences are up to 43 followers.
* If Twitdir is compared to Twittercounter the differences are up to 337 followers.
* If Twitterholic is compared to Twittercounter the differences are up to 294 followers.

It looks like that Twitdir Top 100 followed has the most actual data, although some Twitter users are missing. On the other hand Twitdir is the least user friendly. The top 100 is presented in 10 parts, each consisting of 10 Twitter users. Furthermore it takes an awful lot of time to load the 10 pages. If you want a quick overview of all top 100 Twitter users, I would recommend the Twitterholic Top 100.

TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
BarackObama949379489494600
kevinrose66341--66251
leolaporte577715776257703
cnnbrk438804385743628
alexalbrecht386233861838595
MarsPhoenix--3623736182
JasonCalacanis361483613036083
Scobleizer356053559035473
Veronica333933338233333
twitter----31820
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
THErealDVORAK314763147131399
macrumors313763137531353
hotdogsladies276172761427577
TechCrunch267222670526679
ijustine236792367523636
ricksanchezcnn231762317223152
twittervision22982--22915
guykawasaki210872108421061
ev196921968319635
CaliLewis196611965619647
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
Twitterrific193571934419333
rtm19287--19241
StephenColbert188881888118692
chrispirillo187971879018770
wilw187691876018740
patricknorton183651836518345
biz181481814418076
013----18134
twitlive--1746517460
dooce172801727717077
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
laughingsquid167971678516762
chrisbrogan163581634316322
garyvee163561633916267
bloggersblog159011590115889
ambermacarthur154271542315419
darthvader148641485214830
woot146361462714588
gruber144031439814378
hashtags----14220
zappos140881408013983
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
mashable133931338213356
jowyang130741306813044
NotHenryRollins12924----
TwitPic127811277612747
feliciaday125401253412441
zefrank--1236012332
davewiner119621195911947
hodgman118461184211764
dlprager--1181511806
drhorrible--1169811641
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
problogger116521164911631
jakemarsh--1159811600
loiclemeur114351142611403
majornelson10846--10834
Larry--10843--
newmediajim108201081610785
timoreilly108001079210714
DannyTRS107551075510748
Ed10676----
Ed_Dale--1067310646
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
WilHarris106411064010631
wordpress106251061710545
jeffcannata105081050710499
UstreamTV104551044010433
Ihnatko10336--10332
skydiver103081030010265
mollywood102671026510260
twitter_status10003--10009
jack992199149881
zeldman984698459816
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
jonathancoulton9683--9663
SteveJobs9677--9639
macworld963996389603
jkottke961296079592
TUAW950094959482
steverubel942894249418
technorati937493699330
brianshaler933393329331
om--93149292
xenijardin911691129100
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
nytimes878387838759
s----8711
osen----8632
SethGodin8623----
revision3--85558535
cnn842684248410
warrenellis829882938263
gapingvoid8268--8263
missrogue814481418129
factoryjoe806080558050
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
socialmediaclub804780368023
digg802180188000
nprpolitics7986--7909
simplebits778077757767
sarahlane767076637638
Maggie755375547530
acedtect752975277523
BreakingNewsOn747574747462
DanRaine734973497338
Damiano733973327330
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
Dizzed7269----
jeffpulver724972467239
springnet720072007197
PhillyD--7195--
buckhollywood717771797161
CNETNews716571627156
waynesutton71477144--
StephenTColbert70267028--
timer7010----
mybloglog7004----
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
fredwilson69876983--
lonelysandwich--6927--
seesmic6795----
Pistachio67926787--
Zadi67466733--
mozillafirefox--6745--
Borat--6674--
adamcurry66216618--
Mickipedia65866582--
tferriss--6582--
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
ryanblock--6568--
briansolis--6562--

These figures presented above date from Friday October 10, 2008.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Top Twitter Users

For those who are interested in how to find top Twitter users, I have created a collection of links to top lists of Twitter users according to several criteria.

In the first place there are global rankings.

1. Twitterholic

Twitterholic.com offers Top 100 lists based on Followers, Friends and Updates.

2. Twitdir

Twitdir presents Top 100 followed, Top 100 updaters, Top 100 favouriters and Top 100 followers lists.

3. Twittercounter

Twittercounter has a list called The top 100 most popular Twitter users.

4. Twittown

Twittown, the unofficial Twitter community, offers Top 150 followers, Top 150 updates and Top 150 following lists.

5. Twitter Grader

Twitter Grader gives you a grade based on the power of your Twitter profile. It also offers the list with the highest ranked Twitter users.

6. Twitterposter

TwitterPoster is a visual application based on Twitter API. It provides a visual representation of the degree of influence of the Twitter users. It does not present a top list as such, but only top Twitter users are shown.


There are also specialized rankings of Twitter users.

7. Twitstat

Twitstats offers various lists of Twitter users followed by @twitstat : Top 10 today, yesterday, most engaging, most social, happy people, funny people, angry people, tired people, most replies, perfect tweets.

8. Top analyst twitterers / analyst twitter index

On the Technobabble blog, a post in July presented a ranking of analysts.

9. Newspapers that Twitter

Rankings of American newspapers offering Twitter feeds can be found on the graphicdesigner blog. There is a July ranking and an August ranking.

10. Unofficial 2008 Top 50 Tweeples

Finally you can always submit your own Twitter account for the Unofficial 2008 Top 50 Tweeples list.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Public Service Announcement - Twitter gets tough on Spam

I've written about spam on Twitter before yet follower Spam continues to annoy Twitter users.  As Twitter has grown in popularity, it has gotten more aggressive about combatting spam. In the past, the best defense against spammers was to block the spammer from viewing your updates. It was understood that Twitter tracked the blocks closely and the community's self-policing would be acted upon by Twitter. And it seemed to work fairly well as many of the spammers were removed.  Now TechCrunch reports that Twitter has taken an even more aggressive approach by introducing the Spam account.  By sending a reply @spam or direct message will get a spammer on the list.  I just started to follow the Spam account and suggest that you do as well. Let's get rid of Spam!

Crowdsourcing on Twitter

I've seen a lot of interest in Crowdsourcing on Twitter lately. We seem to crowdsource all the time.

As Laura Fitton said in Clive Thompson's great Ambient Awareness article, “I outsource my entire life,” she said. “I can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes.” Many other people are relying on the twitterverse for its opinions and referrals. As an example, just the other day Ken Burbary asked,

Ken promptly received several answers to his request.  Chris Brogan asked Twitter forinnovative ideas on a social media project for Oreo. This happens all the time. Twitter is the ultimate crowdsourcing vehicle.  Several months ago, Zena Weist, discussed the concept in her blog and described the activity on Twitter as Community Sourcing, Community sourcing is taking crowd sourcing to the next level:
Outsourcing a task to a connected group/community for the benefit of that community.


There are a few great books on Crowdsourcing that I highly recommend and of course, each author is active on Twitter.


Mzinga Chairman Barry Libert, wrote We are Smarter than Me.
NYU Professor Clay Shirky, wrote Here Comes Everybody
and most recently, Jeff Howe of Wired wrote Crowdsourcing.


Have you read these books?  What did you think?  How do you use crowdsourcing?











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Sunday, October 5, 2008

New Twitter Communities

As we all know, the Twitterverse is a great community where we can enhance our networking, strengthen relationships and crowdsource various questions/ problems among other things.  Recently, I've joined a few off-Twitter communities devoted to the Twitter network.

Twitterpated is a Ning community organized by A+ Networker, Vincent Wright,  whose goal is a separate discussion and networking group for My Linking Power Forum members who want to enhance their knowledge and reach on Twitter.com. Currently, there are 107 members.

The Birdhouse is another Ning community.  This one is organized by Tweetcrunch, a blog devoted to Twitter and Microblogging news. The Birdhouse is a place for developers and users who share the love of Micro blogging in any shape or form, from Twitter to Rejaw create groups, share new apps, ideas or suggestions, and get to know the people behind the tweet.  Brand new, there are currently15 members.

More established Twitter communities include Tweeple, a LinkedIn group devoted to Twitter.  Currently,  there are1600 members and 27 lively discussions posted.

On Facebook, Mark Carter created Twitter Strategies and Connections, For people actively using Twitter and people actively wondering HOW to use Twitter...Your forum to connect with like minded people so you can ask questions and share expertise and strategies (this includes everyone from new users to the "Twitter pros") that will make your Twitter experience more valuable! There are 697 members with some lively discussions, videos, and wall comments.

I enjoy participating in each of these communities as well as other social media communities.  A lot of interesting tips,tools and discussions that don't occur in 140 characters.  The net-net is a stronger community, whether on Twitter or not.  Hope to see you around.
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