stars - TheWayoftheWeb

Two sporting celebrities I've discovered on Twitter

December 11, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

It seems like every day reveals another celebrity using Twitter. Today I stumbled across two!

Lance Armstrong doesn’t really need an introduction as a 7-time winner of the Tour de France, and also an inspirational figure who overcame cancer. There’s also Livestrong, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, uniting people to fight cancer. He’s tweeting at @lancearmstrong.

Meanwhile Will Carling is the former captain of the England Rugby Union team, with 72 caps from 1988-1996, as well as playing for Harlequins. He captained England to two Five Nations triumphs in 1991 and 1992, the final of the 1991 World Cup, and a 1995 Grand Slam. He’s at @willcarling.

Add that to a list of sporting stars including:

If you’ve spotted any other sporting stars, past or present, let me know in the comments. And don’t let it stop you if they’re on Plurk, Jaiku or Identi.ca instead!

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Filed Under: twitter, Uncategorized Tagged With: andy murray, celebrities, lance armstrong, shaq, sports, stars, twitetr, will carling

Is Clay Shirky the biggest celebrity of Web 2.0?

August 18, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Because ‘The Rock Stars of Web 2.0‘ list on Ditto.net certainly seems to think so! (Disclaimer – I work for Bauer Media, who created Ditto, and help with some marketing…)

At the moment, Clay Shirky tops the list, followed by Doc Searls, Stowe Boyd and Wayne Sutton. The top female web 2.0 celebrity on the list is Veronica Belmont, who is in joint fifth place with Euan Semple, JP Rangaswami and David Weinberger.

Right at the bottom of the list, with a minus score, is Jason Calacanis! And he’s joined by some pretty big names, including Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington (Techcrunch), Tom Anderson (Myspace), Bill Gates and Barack Obama!

If you don’t think the order is right, get voting at ‘The Rock Stars of Web 2.0‘. And if there are people missing from the list, let me know in the comments, below.

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Filed Under: Digital Culture Tagged With: celebs, clay shirky, Digital Culture, ditto, doc searls, fame, jason calacanis, poll, rock, stars, stowe boyd, survey, veronica belmont, vote, wayne sutton, web 2.0

More activity leads to more attention on Twitter

July 1, 2008 By Jo Jordan Leave a Comment

What I think is useful to know

I am a psychologist and I am mostly interested in why we use Twitter: what do we hope to achieve? But hope is a function of our ability to see a goal and road or pathway to the goal. So, I am also interested in how people use Twitter. A good set of numbers or metrics is always a good starting point for seeing what is possible and what is not.

Good reference site

I’ve discovered a blog that presents lots of numbers. A year old post on “types of Twitter users” is interesting.

The article begins with a 2×2 model beloved of management theorists. People with lots of followers and lots of updates are stars. People with lots of followers and few updates are influentials. People with lots of updates and few followers are bots. And finally, people who have few followers and few updates are lurkers. We all started there.

When I look at the scattergrams, I think this 2×2 is forced. It looks to me that there is a very strong correlation between activity and followers.

The more you talk, the more followers you have!

What does this mean for planning your usage?

Do you intend to get bigger and bigger? Do you have an intuitive sense of a good size for you?

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