The Twitter Book

Figure out who's influential on Twitter

Figuring out who's influential on Twitter looks straightforward—just see who has the most followers. But don't be deceived: because Twitter automatically recommends followees for new accounts, and because people can game the system, the number of followers actually tells you very little about the value or influence of an account.

Take the New York Times' main account, a feed of headlines from their site (@nytimes). It has hundreds of thousands of followers, making it one of the most-followed Twitterers, according to Twitterholic (http://twitterholic.com). But it's very rarely retweeted, suggesting people don't find its posts highly valuable.

Speaking of retweets—a decent measure of influence—there are sites that track who's been retweeted most frequently. The most notable are Retweetist (http://retweetist.com) and Retweet Radar (http://retweetradar.com).

It's also important to know that almost anyone on the list of top Twitterers is probably on Twitter's recommended list for new users. If you check out any of them on TwitterCounter (http://twittercounter.com), you'll see a really sharp spike starting the day they were added to the official list. For example, see http://twittercounter.com/timoreilly/all.

For a more nuanced approach, one that takes into account followers, retweetability and other factors, check out Twitalyzer (http://twitalyzer.com), shown here.