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A group of researchers have proven something we already expected to be the case: your Twitter follower count is somewhat of a meaningless metric when it comes to determining influence. To reach this conclusion, the researchers examined the Twitter accounts of over 54 million active users, out of some 80 million accounts crawled by their servers. They then went on to measure various statistics about these accounts, including audience size, retweet influence and mention influence. The conclusion? Those with the largest number of followers may be "popular" Twitterers, but that's not necessarily related to their influence. High follower counts don't always mean someone is being retweeted or mentioned in any meaningful ways. Sponsor The findings from this research project have been published in an research paper available here on the project's homepage . How the Data Was Analyzed The data the researchers had access to is astounding: 54,981,152 user accounts, 1,963,263,821 social (follow) links and 1,755,925,520 tweets . In order to collect this massive store of data, the researchers contacted Twitter and asked permission to crawl Twitter's service. Twitter granted them access and white-listed the IP address range for the 58 servers that were used in the data collection. In total, the crawler was able to scan 80 million Twitter accounts during the month of August 2009. Only 54+ million of those accounts were actually in-use at the time, which, in and of itself, is an interesting finding about how many people create a Twitter account and then abandon it. Only 8% of the active accounts were set to private, so they were ignored during the data analysis. The researchers also used the Twitter API to gather additional information about a user's social links and tweets. The study focused on the largest part of the Twitter network - the "single disproportionately large connected component," notes the paper, that contained 94.8% of users and 99% of all links and tweets. Within that large network of "in-use" accounts, the researchers further narrowed down the data to focus on the "active users." These users where those who had more than 10 tweets and had a valid screen name that could be retweeted by others. (Interesting - it's possible to have an account and not a screen name?) That left "only" 6,189,636 active users out of the initial 80 million to examine. To measure the influence of these 6+ million users, the researchers looked at how the entire set of the 52 million users interacted with these active users. The Three Measures of Influence After examining the data, the researchers found that the most followed individuals spanned a wide variety of public figures and news sources and included accounts like CNN, New York Times, Barack Obama, Shaquille O'Neal, Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and others. However, the most retweeted users tended to be content aggregation services like TwitterTips, TweetMeme, and, interestingly enough, they counted the tech blog Mashable as an aggregation service, too. Other heavily retweeted users included Guy Kawasaki, the humor site The Onion and again, The New York Times. Meanwhile, those users with the most "mentions" - not a direct retweet including the original content of someone else's tweet, but just a casual mention of their name - were celebs. These three measures of influence - followers, retweets and mentions - has surprisingly little overlap when looking at the top influentials. The top 20 lists from these three categories only had two users in common: Ashton Kutcher and Puff Daddy. The researchers also examined the ability of Twitter users to influence others. They determined that the most influential users hold significant influence over a variety of topics, as opposed to being experts in just one area. Examining the 233 "All-Time Influentials" Out of the 6 million active Twitter users, the researchers picked the top 100 users in each of the three categories. Due to the overlap, there were only 233 distinct users on these lists. These were dubbed the "all-time influentials." Some of these accounts belonged to news organizations or celebs, but others were just regular users. Regarding that last group - it appears that those users who limit their tweets to a single topic are the most likely to increase their influence scores. In the end, what the researchers found was that follower count alone is not necessarily a worthy measure of determining influence. Other factors come into play as well. Although some heavily-followed accounts are also mentioned and retweeted a lot, just looking at audience size doesn't reveal an account's ability to influence and impact the Twitter universe. According to the project's homepage, the researchers are hoping to make the data they collected available to the community at large. Before doing so, they will discuss it with Twitter in order to determine that their data sharing plan agrees with the company's policy. They plan to have an update on this situation - possibly the data itself - by May 2010. Discuss
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The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn't Prove Influence on Twitter
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On Wednesday, BusinessWeek released their list of the top 25 angel investors in the tech industry, naming Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon ahead of veteran angels Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman. Conway and Hoffman are two of the most influential angels in tech, and have invested in some of the largest Internet companies known today, including Google , Facebook , Twitter and Digg . Dixon, a younger, less experienced investor than Conway and Hoffman, snagged the top spot due to both his diverse investment portfolio and the superior financial performance of his investments. Sponsor The list was curated in partnership between BusinessWeek and the startup tracker YouNoodle , which took a three pronged approach to ranking the tech angels. First they analyzed the growth of the angels' investments based on the amount invested, the number of employees, and the number of "companies operating at valuations greater than $100 million, and the sale of any companies for more than $50 million." Leadership was the next key factor which BusinessWeek and YouNoodle took into account. "The importance of each angel was measured by looking at the network of co-investments between angels, as well as at the ability to act as a bridge to other angel groups," writes BusinessWeek's Ira Sager. "From the perspective of an entrepreneur, the ability to attract other investors is critical." Lastly, they compared each angel's portfolio for diversity, which helped push Chris Dixon above his fellow angels. Dixon, an early investor in Skype , and his Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake (ranked 20th overall) hold the top two spots in terms of portfolio diversity. Despite being ranked 11th in terms of influence, Dixon was crowned the king of the angels thanks in no small part to the range of industries he has invested in; however the overall success of his investments seems to have played the largest role. The financial performance category seems to have been given the most weight by BusinessWeek and YouNoodle. The top seven angels also fall within the top eight best financial performers; Paul Graham (No. 11 overall) is the outlier here, ranking seventh in terms of financial performance. The category with the least weight seems to be portfolio diversity, as Conway and Hoffman achieved their high ranks despite placing 12th and 24th respectively in diversity. Their cause was undoubtedly helped by their 1st and 3rd place finishes in terms of influence. In fourth place overall is Esther Dyson, an investor in Delicious and Meetup , and behind her is Peter Thiel, who helped Yelp and Zynga get off the ground. Rounding out the top 10 is Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, Chris Sacca, Mike Maples and Andy Bechtolsheim. Y Combinator's Paul Graham found the #11 spot, Digg's Kevin Rose came in at #15, Naval Ravikant is #22, and Google's own Eric Schmidt is #24. What are your thoughts on BusinessWeek's list? Do you think the measuring sticks they used to rank the angels are fair? Or would you use different metrics to determine the best of the best? Let us know what you think in the comments. Discuss
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Chris Dixon Bests Conway, Hoffman For Top Tech Angel Spot
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A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools. At first glance, this may seem significant. But a closer look shows that Fortune 100 companies are showing interest but nothing to prove that social media tools are gaining significant corporate acceptance. Here's a copy of the full report and an accompanying power point presentation . But it is early in the game and these are results show that social media tools are making credible gains. Sponsor The services of choice? No surprise: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blog platforms. Twitter is number one, followed by Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs. The study found that 65 percent of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook fan page, 50 percent have a YouTube channel, and one-third (33 percent) have corporate blogs. Only 20 percent of the major international companies are utilizing all four platforms to engage with stakeholders. The fact that the Fortune 100 do not leverage multiple tools is a sign of how consumer-based social media tools are not fully understood or leveraged for maximum benefit. It's also evident of just how much of an opportunity big companies have in using the social Web if they use it to its full extent. Companies that extend to multiple media networks still have a chance to get ahead of competitors. The frequency of posts illustrates that companies are posting but not nearly as often as they could. Let's take a quick look at some of the findings for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs: Twitter The report says that Deutsche Telekom uses Twitter for announcements while Volkswagen uses it to RT and Home Depot for customer service. Conclusion? Fortune 100 companies are still searching for the best way to use Twitter. But just posting announcements seems pretty sterile. From the white paper: "Leaders of the pack on the Fortune Global 100 are Sony's SonyPlayStation with well over 115,000 followers and SonyPictures who is followed by almost 50,000 people and following over 6,000 Twitterers themselves." Burson-Marsteller also states that Fortune 100 companies are supporting multiple accounts. This is perhaps most encouraging: customer engagement is beginning to be more widespread across product groups. Facebook Facebook shows some of the most promise. Most of the Fortune 100 companies have tens of thousands of users. Perhaps the strongest sing of acceptance is in the number of corporate product groups that use Facebook. Companies like Sony have multiple fan pages. YouTube YouTube is used mostly by U.S. companies. Entertainment, electronics and auto companies are the most likely to have YouTube channels. Viewership shows promise. Consumers want to see product videos. Connecting YouTube with Twitter, Facebook and a blog can make for a potent combination if all are updated on a regular basis. Blogs Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation. "Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts." The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog? Conclusion Corporate America is using the social Web. It's apparent that companies have waded a bit deeper into the water but the opportunities are clear. The companies that embrace multiple mediums and keep up with a consistent volume of updates will be the big winners, no matter if they are a Fortune 100 or a Fortune 1,000 company. Discuss
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Are The Fortune 100 Now Beginning To Embrace Social Media Tools?
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