Minneapolis’ Most Interesting Twitter Users?
There has been some buzz in the Twitterverse today about a new feature on Twitterholic that filters their stats service by location. This link, for example, lists the top Twitter users in Minneapolis by followers.*
Lee Odden from search marketing firm TopRank top that list.
I thought it would be fun to try to measure the interestingness of our local Twitter users. The assumption I’m using here is that people who manage to build a following over time are likely more interesting Twitterers to the general public than those who do not. Of course, this assumes that people WANT to build an audience over time, which certainly isn’t always the case. Many people use the service to stay in touch with a close group of friends and have no interest in the service beyond that.
That being said, here is a list of Minneapolis Twitter users who’s tweeted at least 100 time ranked by the number of followers they have over the number of tweets they’ve sent (followers / updates = F/U). If you’re looking for some interesting local people to follow on Twitter, this may be a good place to start:
At the top of the list are people who have more followers than tweets sent. That’s impressive. At the bottom of the list is The Current’s playlist twitter-bot that has sent out 57,690 tweets to a measly 80 followers. In fact, The Current’s account is currently suspended for “Suspicious Activity.”
Based on F/U rate, it looks like MinnPost is ~80x more interesting than the StarTribune. In this case, it looks like the StarTribune is pumping out automatic tweets on everything hitting their website. People don’t seem to enjoy subscribing to fire hoses. MinnPost’s account is hand-edited, showing that some editing can pay off when it comes to picking Twitter-worthy news.
* It’s worth noting that there are certainly local Twitter users missing from this list. This is based on people who used the term “Minneapolis” within the location field of their Twitter account.
December 9th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
There should be a shill factor calculated in that. If you’re shilling for a product or firm, your interestingness is multiplied by zero.
December 9th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I messed up by misspelling Minneapolis in my profile! Fixed now.
December 9th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
What up? Unless my quick math is wrong, I have 629 follwers and 106 updates = 5.9 F/U.
December 9th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
R.T., did you happen to add Minneapolis to location to your bio today? You’re showing up on Twitterholic now. I’m not sure why you weren’t there when I grabbed a snapshot of the data earlier today. I’ll try to update F/U Rank later this week once more people who want to be counted have had a chance to update their locations.
I assume you know how to spell Minneapolis better than Mr. Brauer.
Justin, shills have a hard time building an audience. It’s self-correcting. Of course, there are people who like shills. QVC?
Shaq has one of the highest F/U’s.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
My first thought on this was that the assumption is slightly flawed. Many followers + infrequent updates = interesting? It’s easy to follow, and not unfollow people who you don’t hear from often, and don’t clutter up your twitterfeed.
Or few followers with even fewer updates = interesting?
But your data set shows mostly people with 700+ updates, proving that my initial thought was pretty bogus. So this is a cool list. I’d be curious what the strategy was of the top couple people on the list. Jason Buss seems to be actively following a couple thousand people.. but reading his tweets.. I don’t get it. QuantumGood is the husband of SarahJL — might be worth profiling those two.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Yeah, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I block every user that isn’t local or someone I care to know, probably like 30-40 users. So by blocking them, that makes me less interesting? But I bet this post will get a lot of local traffic and help those ad numbers, right?
December 9th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Ha! If I lived in Minneapolis I’d be the most interesting one of all with a F/U rating of 5.23.
December 9th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Jason, I filtered people with less than 100 updates to avoid ratios to measure people who’ve been on a while.
Moe, good point. It’s hard to know why someone follows you with the exception of obvious spammers with thousands of friends but few followers.
Jodi, there are interesting people outside of Minneapolis?
December 9th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
No, no, all the interestingness is right there in Minneapolis, epicenter of all things interesting and people of interest.
December 9th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I do like the concept of an F-U rating.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:37 am
[...] Ed Kohler ranks Minneapolis Twitter users by “interestingness” using his patent-pending “F/U” algorhythm. [...]
December 10th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Like the Vice President, my Twitter account (justplainbob) has an undisclosed location. But in case anyone is interested, I am following 130, have 85 followers and have updated 553 times.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Looks like because I have a lot of tweets but a medium level of followers at 206 my rating plummeted. I think I had over 300 tweets alone on Election Day live-tweeting my local precinct for #mnvotes. Either I need to stop tweeting or get a lot of new followers to make me more “interesting”.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Fiona, Lee Odden is a great example of someone who tweets regularly about events and has a huge following.
Of course, interestingness can mean a lot of things. I’ve explained the criteria I’ve used above.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I ranked 44th for St. Paul, MN. Guess I should add “Minneapolis” to my profile, too?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I’m surprised I’m at #77; never thought of myself as someone to follow. Though I have gained 20 followers since this data was created.
Currently, I’m at 157 followers with 831 updates, putting me at a .19 F/U rating, a small bump up in overall ranking.
That’s the only time I ever want to be associated with a .19.
Thanks for doing this Kohler.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
kohler-
My F/U is .69 and I’m no where to be found on this list. I’ll try not to take it personally, if you add me and follow me ……@cydneyw
December 17th, 2008 at 10:23 am
being interesting… now, could there be a higher calling?
thanks, Ed – great list (beats Twitterholics’ version,
for sure)
what do you think of http://www.twittergrader.com ?
I see your personal Twitter page edged up on me
by a tenth of a point (ha, ha)
and Odden’s a perfect 100 now – he can retire
cheers,
Graeme
December 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Jason Buss is a VP of Recruiting (not his exact title but close enough) at Ameriprise and does a lot of speaking around the country on HR and Recruiter related topics. Very well respected in our community.
April 7th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
[...] I’ve checked out the Twitterholic lists of Minneapolis users, the Twitter Grader things, The Deets‘ F/U formula and all the commentary around them, Minneapolis’ tag on WeFollow and poked [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Hi Ed – interesting post. I hadn’t thought of the F/U ratio but it makes sense. Recently I ranked all 50 states based on % of active users (or penetration). Minnesota ranks# 13. I was pleasantly surprised by this until I learned Tennessee ranked 3 10.
You can see the whole list here if you’re interested: http://amazingserviceguy.com/1586/customer-service-training/ranking-states-by-twitter-users/
May 26th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I don’t see my name up there… @bradwellman
May 26th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Brad, my guess is that you didn’t have Minneapolis in your profile or hadn’t tweeted at least 100 times at the time this post was published, this weren’t on the twitterholic radar.