Personally, I’d always favor quality over quantity and have no interest in a rankings game based on frequency.

Since starting http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing in early November, I’ve had a steady if modest increase in the number of people following and just a handful of retweets. Works for me.

What is the best way today to find the most influencing users?

Your top 10 at Twitterholic:

Guy Kawasaki
44,008 Following; 42,679 Followers; 16,047 Updates
9th on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter for 16 months
Um, an officer in the “Ultimate Self-Promoter’s Club”

JesseNewhart
3,195 Following; 4,198 Followers; 2,353 Updates
581st on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter for less than 4 months (Florida)

Calvin Lee
1,871 Following; 2,271; Followers 16,681; Updates
1,743rd on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter for 7 months (Los Angeles)
Promoting his business through Twitter.

Chris Brogan
24,773 Following; 30,410 Followers; 29,348 Updates
22nd on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter for 26 months
Ubiquitous social media user that apparently does little else but stay online.

Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
531 Following; 37,669 Followers; 5,980 Updates
16th on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter for 22 months
Since this account retweets articles & URLs, it makes sense that their content will be retweeted.

Reg Saddler – Shorty Awards (shortyawards)
16,874 Following; 5,834 Followers; 17,436 Updates
360th on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter – Less than 2 months
Hmm? Self-promotional effort about Twitter get’s retweeted because that is part of the way to be involved with the awards. Go figure!

Darren Rowse (problogger)
8,853 Following; 25,728 Followers; 8,211 Updates
29th on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter – 21 months
Professional social media animal is being retweeted. Sheesh, is the really news to anyone?

BNO News (BreakingNewsOn)
8,158 Following; 15,271 Followers; 13,749 Updates
77th on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter – 20 months
Gee, a site tweeting breaking news is getting retweeted. Who knew that could happen?

Pete Cashmore (mashable)
1,621 Following; 26,280 Followers; 12,858 Updates
30th on twitterholic
Online @ Twitter – 20 months
Yet another content producer has their story titles and URLs retweeted. Quick! Alert the media! Retweet it!

My point, Saurabh, is that you must look deeper than the surface number count to draw any correlations between popularity (not authority, as you suggest) to see what might be driving the re-tweeting of content.

These users have well over 2,000 Twitter accounts following them. Half of them have over 15 thousand followers. They have all posted a large number of tweets. Even the youngest users (those only on Twitter for months) have large numbers of posts and, if they keep up their tweet count, will equal or surpass the other more prolific Twitter users.

They are from large population areas. Most are from popular Web sites. The similarities abound.

Saurabh, these variables are just as likely (if not moreso) to be the determining factors which explain their rankings in your counts — not the simplistic counting, alone. You have to look deeper into the “why” of retweet popularity. Reliance upon simple number counts (frequency) will likely lead to incorrect conclusions.

Also, please note the difference between popularity and authority, as Phil has noted in the comments above. All of you involved in this folly attempt to identify “authoritative” Twitter posts should really top using the words authority and influence as they are misnomers.

This is a classic “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation. Broaden your look at the entire environment before looking at specifics.

The debate is very same as “Why people bookmark a link?”.

The first thing I checked after creating this hack was the overlap amongst the leaderboard at retweetrank and twitterholic (ranking based on #followers) and yeah that is just ~10%.

The new words are fun to make up, aren’t they. ;o)

@Phil … Thanks. TechCrunch has truly become the home base for sycophant techie wannabes. I’m not surprised they don’t change. It would require recognizing their clueless nature.

I think what bothers me most about all these pseudo communities (like TechCrunch) is that they claim to understand online communication, but they haven’t any real clue. Still, they are followed. This might will just prove one thing. Online communication gives sycophant sheep an opportunity to feel like they have a voice.

@Saurabh … You may well “believe retweets are one of the best indications for finding who is producing the most interesting content.” That still doesn’t make it true. I guess you just fail to (or refuse to) observe the obvious.

Simply having one’s posts cut-n-pasted doesn’t mean anything except to (a) the person that does the RT and (b) the small number of people that might appreciate it. Still, your counting of RT doesn’t mean you know anything about (a) why the person retweeted, (b) what the motivation for the RT was and many dozens of other questions.

Saurabh, such a study would need to take into account the differences between people with 4 followers and those with 4,000 followers. Don’t you see the exponential aspect of counting retweets and having the Twitter users with the most followers show up as being retweeted mor often? You aren’t learning anything that a freshman (in high school) mathematics student can’t figure out. What is that? Having more followers makes it more likely that you’ll have more things retweeted. It is so simple. Gee, is anyone actually stunned to see that happen?

You and the others in this conversation (if we can call it that) seem to be so caught up in the fascination with counting things that you totally overlook determining if it (the simplistic act of counting) even means anything.

When you give a deeper look at the relationships and can ‘prove’ that there is some form of correlation between RTs and authority, then I’ll look. Right now you’re just tilting at windmills.

Though, a few retweets may be making fun of the originator, the percentage seems to be negligible. I couldn’t find any retweet in a negative context even after looking to last 200+ retweets: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=RT

I believe retweets are one of the best indications for finding who is producing the most interesting content. It is better than the older rankings based on number of followers. What do you think can be the right way for finding the users producing the most interesting content?

Retweetrank is just a small hack. As you say, its just the beginning, these small ideas will gradually evolve into a big really useful tool.

First, as a career-native of Silicon Valley, I’ve long been critical of how TechCrunch frames the region I call my vocational home:

http://www.philgomes.com/blog/2007/05/skewed-perspective-in-silicon-valley.htm

http://www.philgomes.com/blog/2007/12/techcrunch-makes-katie-hafners-epic.htm

http://www.philgomes.com/blog/2008/12/media-postions-gm-pr-adviser-as-auto.htm

I sent TechCrunch HQ a copy of Freiberger and Swaine’s “Fire In The Valley” such that they’d get some kind of clue. As yet, no thank-you.

As to various measures of “Authority” around the Web:

- Too often, “Authority” is conflated with “Popularity”. I can think of a TON of blogs that, while not popular, are more authoritative than their A-list counterparts.

- As a PR person, I find that seeking A-list attention is not the best (or even a “good”) measure of success. You’re better off working with several passionate enthusiasts with perhaps don’t necessarily feel the need to speak online in their “outdoor voice”.

Best in the new year, sir.

But don’t be too harsh on these measuring instruments. They’re an attempt to try to quantify authority, and have some merit. (Just like the Ad Age 150! OK, let’s not go there again.) True, they’re far from statistically valid and should not be taken as gospel, or valid research. But perhaps the notion of “authority,” in our digitally-mediated world, should be expanded to include not just the human factors, but also some attempt at valid, objective measurements. After all, any “authority” figure assumes that position with a certain amount of hubris, no?

As for your use of the term “blogasm,” I find that, well, quite twittilating. LOL. (Just what we need — another twitter word, right?)