Twitter: Lots of Followers Does Not Make You an Influencer
By Anna Johnson on March 31st, 2010Recent research published by ReadWriteWeb has uncovered has uncovered some interesting findings about ‘influencers’ on Twitter. The two big take-outs so far? Huge numbers of followers does not make you an ‘influencer’ and true influencers tend NOT to retweet.
Okay… so what’s an influencer?
Based on an analysis of 54 million Twitter accounts, 2 billion follow links and 1.7 billion tweets by Meeyoung Cha, Hamed Haddadi, Fabricio Benevenuto and Krishna P. Gummadi – an ‘influencer’ is a Twitter user who meets three criteria of ‘influence’ – followers, retweets and mentions.
Or does it?
It turns out that there is little overlap between these measures of influence. In particular, having a lot of followers does not mean someone will get mentioned or retweeted much.
So what’s an ‘influencer’ again?
Another measure of influence is a Twitter user’s inclusion in people’s Twitter lists. Twitter users can and do create lists of other Twitter account holders based on certain criteria e.g. a list of actors they like, a list of top retailers, a list of favourite authors, and so on. The reasoning here is that someone regarded as influential is more likely to make it into other people’s Twitter lists, with the more inclusions indicating more influence.
Now for the second interesting take-out based on this version of influence: influencers tend NOT to retweet.
Based on analysing 485 accounts, ReadWriteWeb has found that the majority of influencers retweet fewer than 30 percent of the time.
Of course, both definitions of ‘influence’ are rather narrow and confined to the world of Twitter – it’s not obvious that being a Twitter influencer on either definition translates into real-world influence…
