» Local Twitter Phenomena Continues Jeff Beckham

Local Twitter Phenomena Continues

The excitement around Twitter, which exploded onto the scene at South by Southwest, continues to have local ties. Today’s Slate story calls Austinite Paul Terry Walhus, known on Twitter as springnet, the most popular person on the site with 8,789 friends and 1,722 followers. Congrats, Paul!

Paul was also featured in Omar Gallaga’s recent piece on Twitter for the Austin American-Statesman.

Ummm, yeah, I’m all for Austin pride — but the thing is, friends in this case are a one-way street — those are just people HE added.

So it’s not really a metric of his popularity, so much as of how many people he could add as friends. It’s like saying someone who has 50,000 numbers in their cell phone, but receives far fewer calls than other people daily, is the most popular person alive.

His followers — which is how many people list HIM as a friend, and would seem a more accurate popularity metric — put him at the 9th most popular on the site.

Still no small accomplishment, but an unquestionable misrepresentation by Slate, probably due to a writer who didn’t take the time to fully learn the vernacular of the service in question.

For the record, you can see detailed stats on Twitter popularity here, amongst other places:
http://twitterholic.com/

Jeff Beckham

Local Twitter Phenomena Continues

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