For class this week my assignment is: look at Twitter and write your fourth post about some of the best tweeters out there who are tweeting about your topic. Who are they? What do they write about? What’s their style?
When brainstorming, the best tweeters that come to mind have a huge following: Dr. Mark Drapeau, Ashton Kutcher, Rob Pegoraro are a few that spring to mind. Dr. Mark Drapeau is with Microsoft and he does social media for them. Ashton Kutcher as most of us know is on the show “2 1/2 Men” and married to Demi Moore for now. Rob Pegoraro is a former Washington Post reporter that now has his own blog and covers the IT gadget world. But let me explore the twitter world and come back to explore who really ARE the best tweeters out there…
The twitter accounts with the most followers are according to Twitaholic:
According to New York Times Magazine‘s article
The Most Influential People on Twitter by
DAVID LEONHARDT, these are the most influential twitterers:
The write of the article, talked to “Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive, in which he pointed out that the number of followers somebody had was not as significant as many people imagined.”
According to the article NY Times collaborated with Twitalyzer to see how often someone’s Twitter name was mentioned by other users during a four week period. “Twitalyzer refers to this measure as its Influence Score and then translates it into a 0-to-100 index.” While musicians tend to have the most followers they are not as often retweeted. “However, the top of the influence ranking tends to be dominated by athletes, writers and television stars (including some from Brazil, where Twitter is very popular).”
The Huffington Post only has 600,000 followers compared to Lady Gaga’s 8 million at the time of this survey. However, Huffington’s Post Twitalyzer score is 53 compared to Lady Gaga’s 41. “Bill Simmons, the ESPN writer known as the Sports Guy, has fewer followers (about 1.3 million) and even more influence (a score of 83).”
“A handful of religious leaders may do a better job than anyone of punching above their weight. Deepak Chopra, the spiritual writer, had only about 400,000 followers when we collected the data. The evangelist Rick Warren had about 240,000, and the evangelist Joel Osteen had about 160,000. Yet each of three had an influence score of at least 85, making them among the most quoted and cited people on Twitter.”
But apparently the most influential person with over 3 million followers on twitter is:
Rafinha Bastos
OK.. that was a wide dive.. now going to narrow it down to gossip, politico, charity, and military blogs that does the best covering this type of stuff I’m interested in covering with the Huffington Post, Glittarazzi, and Miss A.
Too be honest not sure how to analyze this, but if I had to take a guess..the most influential celebrity gossipers on twitter are Perez Hilton and People Magazine. Perez Hilton has 3,898,921 followers and has tweeted over 37,000 times. People Magazine has 2,932,997 followers but only 7,000 tweets.
Perez’ Hilton’s style is all over the place and he tends to communicate with a lot of people so hard to follow what they are talking about. You can watch as he interacts with celebrities on twitter like:
People Magazine’s style is simple, upbeat, forward and celebrity focused like: “Emotional night on Dancing! J.R. Martinez brings ballroom to tears.http://ow.ly/6MunX.”
For Political gossip I like Politico. They are nonstop news on politics that mainly only people in DC care about. On twitter they have 257,116 followers. Their style is straight forward and to the point: “First lady Michelle Obama makes a rare trip to Secret Service headquarters: http://politi.co/puQpdA.”
The Washington Post has 656,883 followers. They do political and celebrity gossip. It gives a quick headline and then the link to the story: “Van Jones suggests liberals imitate the tea party:http://wapo.st/qIQxtL.”
The New York Times covers news, financial, political, arts etc like Washington Post. It has 3,801,041 followers. It gives straight up news with the links to the story: “Back home, and homeless: Afghanistan veteran @mattbfarwell on his post-battlefield struggles http://nyti.ms/o57tUI.”
I will dive into Dr. Mark Drapeau and Rob Pegoraro’s twitter next. I recommend following them!!
Dr. Mark Drapeau covers social media and runs social media at Microsoft in Washington, DC. He has 20,014 followers. He describes himself as, “Retired fruit fly brain surgeon and defense strategist now directing special engagements for Microsoft. Editor of@Publicyte. This is my mindcast. http://publicyte.com.” He talks about his day and also the latest social media developments.
Rob Pegoraro, covers the latest in IT gadgets. He has 8,388 followers. He describes himself as, ”
hallpost 
Thanks!
– RP
Of course!!