Most people tend to think people with the most followers on
Twitter are the most influential. Take Justin Bieber for instance who has over
5 million followers. Wow! It is only logical to think his tweets have some
major weight, right? But if Justin Bieber is tweeting on one of Twitter’s
trending topics like Southwest Airline is really influencing people? According
to Northwestern University graduate student Ramanathan Narayanan the answer is
no.
Together with the university’s chair of the electrical
engineering and computer science, Alok Choudhary, Narayanan created a website
called PulseOfTheTweeters.com that ranks influencers according to Twitter
trends. The site explains, “Pulse of the Tweeters uses data mining, sentiment
analysis, and network analysis algorithms to mine millions of tweets and find
the most influential users on Twitter. We help you find the most significant
tweeters across different trends, their opinions, and trends you might be
interested in.” Basically, you can see what Tweeters are making the most
difference when it comes to a specific trending topic. I visited the site and
realized that Silicon Alley Insider (a digital business news publication) is
the biggest influencer when it comes to the iPad. That’s really interested
information for Apple. Imagine if you could know who is the most vocal and who
is influencing other people when it comes to your product?
To learn more about PulseOfTheTweeters.com read this
informative article from the New York Times. And let me know what you think
about the site. Send me a Tweet, of course.
xoxo,
Loren
