RI’s Top Tweeters

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Monday, June 21, 2010

SOCIAL MEDIA by Tracey Minkin, GoLocalProv Features Editor

For some, Twitter is a trend that is genius or a sellout. For others, it's a buzzword that comes just behind Facebook and LinkedIn on the to-do list. For others still, it's the rapidly evolving social platform that may both simplify and enhance not only your life, but your ability to do business.

In a small state like Rhode Island, it may seem that a powerful, far-reaching tool like Twitter is non-local. And yet. Increasing number of Rhode Islanders are tapping into the blue bird and discovering that Twitter can make local even more local, while simultaneously delivering the global. Twitter, it turns out, can matter a lot.

Which is why GoLocalProv wanted to get a grip on Twitter from a local point of view.

We sought, as no other media entity had yet done, to take a snapshot of our fellow Rhode Islanders who were Tweeting, and let you know who were the major players. Our metric: the number of followers, meaning the number of fellow Tweeters who've asked to be in the loop on another's Tweets. It may sound slightly like a popularity contest (and perhaps it is), but it got us closest to a reality of Twitter--who is listening, and how many are there.

In researching, GoLocalProv located powerful Tweeters with big followings, and asked them to identify fellow heavy-hitters. We then picked a date for a snapshot of everyone's follower-count, and took stock. The list you'll find, here, reflects that snapshot. Tomorrow it may be different, and that in and of itself tells us something important about Twitter. The community grows, evolves, and adjusts. If you're bogus, someone may drop you. If you post a fantastic 140 characters that find themselves being ricocheted in the beautiful ReTweet boomerang, you may gain hundreds of new followers in the blink of the Internet's eye.

Who Are Our Biggest Tweeters?

What we found is that RI's major Tweeters form a fascinating cross-section of occupation - from our Top Tweeter (left), a media star thrust onto a celebrity stage via a TV reality show, to the number two (below), a university president; from a ghost hunter to a businessman who is now running for Congress (3rd and 4th). This span says as much about the power of 140 characters as anything. If you've dismissed Twitter, perhaps it's time you checked it out again.

Meanwhile, we indulged in the fun of looking at top celebrities with a Rhode Island connection who Tweet, tapping into one of the medium's earliest and most vibrant expressions (Britney Spears generally tops the worldwide list of Tweeters). And we asked Andy Cutler, whose communications work at Cutler & Company deals assertively with the beauty and opportunity of Twitter and other social networks, to help us all understand whether we should Tweet... or not. For those who may be leery, we created a primer to demystify.

Because isn't a short burst, sent quicky, to a network of people who might be interested, one of the purest forms of expression? Don't you want updates from your friends, from your community, and even from the world? Isn't this how we gathered at our back fences, our watercoolers, and our porches, to trade headlines of the day?

Perhaps it is. Click and share. Just keep it to 140.

(And we'll be back, in coming days and weeks, with Tweeters who want to talk about why and what they do, as well as further trends in social media.)

Interested in building a local Rhode Island Twitter community?  Comment, below, with your username. 

Related Articles

• The Big Chart: RI’s 50 Top Tweeters
• Top Celebrity Tweeters from RI
• Andy Cutler: To Tweet Or Not To Tweet
• Four Tips for Using Twitter
• Twitter: Ten Words You Need to Know

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