The explosion of twitter has everyone tweeting these days about something. celebrities, news anchors, congressmen, senators, and even the white house seem to have something to tweet about.
But on twitter, you are not judged by the quality of your tweets but the number of followers that you have. A new website called We Follow tracks the number of followers for everyone who has submitted their tweet feed.
As I was poking around on there I came across some startling revelations that may reveal some insight into today’s culture. We follow ranks the top ten twitterers- regardless of category.
Our president Barack Obama, who thinks that he is the most important man in the world, has 1,623,513 followers and is ranked 6. But Oprah, CNN, Brittney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres are all ranked higher than him. In fact, Ellen has almost twice as many followers with 2,323,281. But she was slightly edged out by Ashton Kutcher at 2,610,810 who is ranked number 1. So I guess Ashton Kutcher punked all of you!
In the news category, George Stephanopoulos is ranked eight with 883,663 followers while David Gregory is ranked 12 with 761,379. Anderson Cooper ranked 24 with 272,951. And Katie Couric again brings up the rear at 49 with 37,614 followers.
The latest Nielsen ratings had David Gregory (NBC) in the lead followed by Charlie Gibson (ABC) and Katie Couric (CBS) bringing up the rear again. That is fairly consistent with their twitter rank. Charlie Gibson was not ranked. Maybe George Stephanopoulos should be anchoring the nightly news. Hmm…something for ABC to think about. Somehow, Katie Couric has more TV viewers than twitter followers. Must be a fluke!
Rush, Hannity, Glenn Beck are not listed and have no ranking.
In the politics category, Al Gore is ranked 2, with 1,156,450 followers slightly behind Obama with 1,156,450. Makes you wonder exactly, how Obama won the last election, since Al Gore has the personality of a tree! John McCain is ranked 5 with 931,603- behind NPR and Time Magazine. But he has more followers than all the nightly news anchors. Martha Stewart was slightly more popular than McCain with 969,514 followers. Mitt Romney is ranked 59 with 12,255 followers- Katie Couric has twice as many followers as him. Hmmm…
Under the blogger category Perez Hilton is ranked 2 with 1,146,482 slightly behind P Diddy Sean Combs who is ranked 1 with 1,388,423.
So what does all this mean? Well, Obama won the presidency with a strong grassroots campaign on the internet- using a variety of social media that was largely ignored by the Republicans. While our party is trying to delve into the arena now- we still have a long way to catch up to get our message out.
The numbers also reveal that politics is not high on twitter users minds. This may just be a reflection of the attitude of voter apathy- or the frustration of voters to effect change. It might also be a result of the sluggish economy- people tuning out politicians and tuning into entertainers like Ellen and Oprah.
But the fact remains that twittering the future. More people are tapping into mobile news with their phones and ipods- especially in our on demand society. The more ways that they can keep in touch with their constituents the better.- The first rule in politics is to go where the votes are- and the sooner that politicians adapt to the new media the more likely they are to appeal to younger voters.
The US has 535 legislators (US House and Senate). As of now, 170 on twitter. Florida is allotted 27 legislators. Out of those 27 only 7 are on twitter. Of those, 5 are Republican. They include:
- Sen Mel Martinez (R)
- Sen Bill Nelson (D)
- Rep Vern Buchanan (R)
- Rep Ander Crenshaw (R)
- Rep Kendrick Meek (D)
- Rep Tom Rooney (R)
- Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R)
Let’s encourage more of our representatives at the state and federal levels to use twitter and other online social marketing sites to keep in touch with their constituents. Tweet the Vote!
