The TWiT Twitter Derby - Who will be the King of Twitter?
By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)
Regular This Week in Tech (TWiT) listeners will know that a race is breaking out between their pundits as to who will become the most followed on Twitter, which is tracked by Twitterholic. What started as friendly rivalry seems to have turned into an all out Derby where every follower counts. Hubdub has a market on who will win in having the most followers by the end of May.
For those of you that don’t closely follow TWiT here is a more detailed form guide:
Kevin Rose - founder of Digg, Revision 3 and Pownce. Kevin is a late convert to Twitter due to Pownce being a competitor. Now he has joined Twitter his number of followers has rocketed in the past couple of months. Kevin stars in the hugely popular Diggnation show which, if he used it to get more followers, could probably leave his rivals for dust. Follow Kevin.
Leo Laporte - founder and host of TWiT. Another late convert to Twitter due to concerns about brand confusion between TWiT and Twitter. He has now fully embraced it and is hugely ramping up his follower base having recently taken the top slot from Obama (who is that guy?). The TWiT show reaches 500,000 monthly unique listeners so he has a lot of firepower to draw on if needed. Follow Leo.
Jason Calacanas - founder of Weblogs and Mahalo. Jason was an early adopter of Twitter and has built up a sizable following. Mahalo is massively ramping up its user base and Jason is a born networker, so while he is behind he shouldn’t be under-estimated. Follow Jason.
Robert Scoble - the Scobleizer, formerly of the Pod Show, now with Fast Company. Robert is an A-list blogger extraordinaire. If you follow him you get the feeling that their is barely a thought that goes through his head that doesn’t get blogged, Twittered, streamed or otherwise blasted out to the blogosphere. Easily the winner on most prolific Tweeter. Follower growth seems to have flattened though. Follow Robert.
John C Dvorak - tech journalist and blogger, star of Cranky Geeks among other shows. John is the cranky uncle who moves seemlessly from the correct way to cook pulled chicken to Microsoft’s web strategy. Despite claiming not to be interested in the race he never misses the chance to pitch his blog (Dvorak.org/blog!) or twitter account (THErealDVORAK!). Follow John.
Wil Harris - British technology blogger and founder of Channel Flip. Wil is the youngest of the crew coming in at a sprightly 25. He is way behind on number of followers but could potentially galvanise the British nation by turning this into a transatlantic fight. You guys dumped our tea in the harbour, we’ll bloody well take your Twitter! Follow Wil.
Personally, my money is on Leo Laporte but I might have a small side bet on Wil Harris, purely out of patriotic duty.
Market: TWiT Twitter Derby: Who will be the most followed by midnight May 25th?
Popularity: 12% [?]
Tags: jason calacanas, john c dvorak, kevin rose, leo laporte, robert scoble, this week in tech, twit, twitter, wil harris
