{"id":85,"date":"2018-06-27T00:00:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T00:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joecruickshank.com\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2019-11-13T15:53:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T15:53:59","slug":"the-most-important-people-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joecruickshank.com\/blog\/the-most-important-people-on-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Important People on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Twitter I have 160 followers, and they are the most important people there.\u00a0 They’re the only ones listening.\u00a0 But who is the most important, and how can I exploit them for a Twitter high score?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’ve always enjoyed Twitter.\u00a0 Facebook is fine for staying connected with family and friends, but sometimes that connectedness brings uncomfortable familiarity with Grandpa Billy’s thinly masked racism and Aunt Polly’s “inspirational” quote spam.\u00a0 You can mute everyone, but it’s easier just to not bother.\u00a0 Twitter though… Twitter is low-key.\u00a0 You follow and unfollow on a whim, and the people you follow don’t expect anything of you.\u00a0 Messages are short, and it’s easy to drop in and out of (plus you get a little countdown of characters when tweeting, and I like a countdown<\/a>).<\/p>\n

160 followers sounds mightily impressive to anyone unfamiliar with the platform.\u00a0 The Joe parade is coming!\u00a0 160 adulating fans in tow, all with banners aloft and chanting his name.\u00a0 Less impressive on closer inspection when it’s revealed that many of these people are actually cardboard cut-outs and the remainder are oblivious to their involvement in this ceremony.\u00a0 Even more unimpressive when we find out the average number of followers on Twitter is over 700<\/a>, and I’ve been on the site since 2009.\u00a0 Nevertheless, as a show of gratitude to those that have stuck around I’m going to actually look at that list of followers and find out exactly who I should be desperately pandering to.<\/p>\n

One click into that list and I can see that even Twitter’s pathetic spambot recognition has identified 5 of those 160 as nefarious robo-dickheads.<\/p>\n

\"\"
5 down 155 to go.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now we no longer have the right number of people for a 200 year space trip<\/a>.\u00a0 Probably for the best.\u00a0 Upon further inspection of the list it’s clear that another 12 of our synthetic chums have avoided the filter.\u00a0 That leaves us with a dwindling pack of 143 accounts with actual humans behind them.\u00a0 So how do we determine how important someone is?<\/p>\n

Now it’s time to strip everyone of their humanity and boil them down to their numbers.\u00a0 If “Followers” are the measure of a Twitter high score, then a follower’s individual value can be measured by their potential to attract more.\u00a0 A follower with 500 followers of their own means 500 potential recipients of your rapier wit, if this follower hits the hallowed Retweet button.\u00a0 The number of users that they follow also comes into play though.\u00a0 If you are one of 100 then it’s likely your sexy selfie will be seen.\u00a0 If it’s one in 10,000 then the link to your tiresome blog post<\/a> may never be spotted.\u00a0 The inexorable march of the Twitter timeline is unforgiving.<\/p>\n

So you can work out your own value just by dividing your number of followers by the number of people you follow.\u00a0 If you follow the same number of people that follow you then your value will be 1.\u00a0 My own value is 0.533 (160\/300), which doesn’t seem very good.\u00a0 And even though every “follower” is also a “follows” from the followers perspective, that doesn’t mean our mean (mean) value across Twitter is 1.\u00a0 If you’re in doubt, imagine Twitter with only 5 users (seems great, huh?) then take a look at the below table:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In this example user E is the titan of 5-user Twitter, with 4 followers and only following 1 person, giving a value of 4.\u00a0 So that one user that E follows (user B) may yet reach the heights of 4 whole followers, even though they’re sitting at a lowly 1.\u00a0 Does this show that the titans of 300-million-user-Twitter are also pulling that mean value above 1?\u00a0 If anyone can run those numbers for me then I’d be interested to know.<\/p>\n

There’s something still missing here though.\u00a0 What use is a follower with a high value if they’re no longer using Twitter?\u00a0 If they’re not going to see your tweet, then they have no value.\u00a0 They are dead to us.\u00a0 Let’s call them “dead users”.\u00a0 As Twitter doesn’t make users’ login\/usage details available to us, we’ll need to just use the date of their last tweet.\u00a0 We’ll pick an arbitrary 100 days, and say that if you haven’t made a noise in that amount of time then you’re effectively gone.\u00a0 So what does that do to my beloved<\/a> 143?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sliced atwain.\u00a0 Half of my followers are essentially not following.\u00a0 They dropped dead on the Joe Parade back in 2012, and nobody’s been to check on them since.\u00a0 How could I have been so neglectful?<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, we still have 72 followers alive and (presumably) well that I can be thankful for.\u00a0 If you clicked on this link from Twitter, then you are likely one of those 72.\u00a0 If you have read this far regardless of where you arrived from, please accept my sincerest apologies.\u00a0 So without further ado, here’s my Top 5 most valuable followers:<\/p>\n

#5:\u00a0 @FauxFawx – 2.57<\/h3>\n

#4:\u00a0 @Ornsack – 4.20<\/h3>\n

#3:\u00a0 @michaelmphysics – 5.28<\/h3>\n

#2:\u00a0 @RocketLGCentral – 6.79<\/h3>\n

#1:\u00a0 @65dos – 20.49<\/h3>\n

And that’s that.\u00a0 My favourite band<\/a> at the top spot making up more than a quarter of my followers’ total value.\u00a0 A Rocket League news account following me despite me being only marginally above average at the game (I’m a Gold III, which is approximately top 46%<\/a> of players).\u00a0 Two brilliantly minded content creators, one who has featured here<\/a> before and made some brilliant Jurassic Park content<\/a> in their youth, the other is the author of Twitter’s funniest tweet<\/a> and made some brilliant Jurassic Park content<\/a> in their youth.\u00a0 Fifth is someone who I have (…bear with me a second) only just followed back on Twitter because I didn’t realise how important they were.<\/p>\n

I can see that some of you followers have some impressive followers of your own, including Peter Serafinowicz<\/a> (154.94), Stephen Fry<\/a> (261.86) and Duncan Bannatyne<\/a> (1,175.68).\u00a0 I mean, it’s not quite a Shakira<\/a> (250,001.13) or Elon Musk<\/a> (399,249.25), but it does eclipse anything in my humble list.\u00a0 In an ideal world these would have factored into your own value, but that’s an infinite rabbit-hole that I don’t want to go down.<\/p>\n

If you didn’t make the top 5, you can at least check where your invaluable ass gets you on the full list of alive followers below:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Of course, all of this glosses over the really important details of who is likely to interact with you on the platform.\u00a0 If you ever remember retweeting something of mine, or if somehow you made it to the end of this pointless post, then you’re the real MVP.\u00a0 You’re the one that has actualised their potential.\u00a0 Put yourself at number zero.\u00a0 Zero the hero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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