Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Twitter Snob of the Year Prize!

snob |snäb|
noun
a person with an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth who seeks to associate with social superiors and dislikes people or activities regarded as lower-class.
• [with adj. ] a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people : a musical snob.

DERIVATIVES
snobbery |-bərē| noun ( pl. -beries)
snobbism |-ˌbizəm| noun
snobby adjective ( -bier , -biest ).
ORIGIN late 18th cent. (originally dialect in the sense [cobbler] ): of unknown origin; early senses conveyed a notion of ‘lower status or rank,’ later denoting a person seeking to imitate those of superior social standing or wealth. Folk etymology connects the word with Latin sine nobilitatewithout nobility’ but the earliest recorded sense has no connection with this.

The concept of Twitter Snob was launched in this YouTube clip by Perry Belcher a while ago.

So, logically, one could define a measuring index to evaluate Twitter Snobbism, ie. the TSR or short for Twitter Snob Ratio. Here's the formula:

TSR = (followers-following)/followers.

Per the Belcher definition, Twitter Snobs are expected to have many more followers than following others, so the snobbier one is, the closer his/her TSR gets to 'one'! To get to the highest snobs known in Twitter space one inevitably needs to search among the top hundred scoring twitterers, those with about a million or more followers. You can easily get hold of them at TwitterCounter.com.

For kicks, I went out to measure few known celebs with massive numbers of followers, how they'd compare among each other in TSR terms. I omitted Twitter accounts related to popular entertainment programs or News Agencies and any popular NGOs or other organizations for that matter. Still my 'research' has not been scientifically thorough and can be considered as a draft first approximation...

Here's some fun examples:

@aplusk (the most popular twitterer of all with more than 2.5M followers) TSR = 0,99891654034224
@britneyspears TSR = 0,814898558296152 (Nr 3 of most popular twitterers)
@kevinrose TSR = 0,999821713356387 (serial enterpreneur he calls himself, arrogant prat, I call him)

Here comes the fun part:

@SenJohnMcCain? TSR = 0,999937364220465 Jeez, with less than half the followers compared to @aplusk or @britneyspears, he still manages to be a bigger snob!

But here's the greatest of all: Good ol' Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and ex-Vice President of the US of A: Albert Gore, Member of the BOD of Apple Inc and earth climate protection activist.
TSR = 0,999992898729672 ! Five 9's behind the decimal! Highest score measured yet! Well done Al.

With 1,139,027 followers, Al only follows 8 twitterers! He's also done only 51 updates altogether in the 8 months he's been a member! Pretty busy saving the climate, I reckon. @GuyKawasaki does as many updates in an hour! On a bad day!

But who are those wonderful 8 that dearest @algore follows then? Here u go!

RepowerAmerica
ClimateProject
BarackObama (Cool!)
current_news
currentitalia (Jeez, I didn't know Al spoke Italian?!?)
CurrentUK
ThisIsReality
current

That's it! The Twitter Snob of the Year! Al Gore! The darling of US liberals. Here's to you, lad!

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