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The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn’t Prove Influence on Twitter

New York Times has a story about a study called “Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy” by Meeyoung Cha and Hamed Haddadi and Fabricio Benevenuto and Krishna P. Gummadi. The NYT article says:

“The conclusion? Those with the largest number of followers may be “popular” Twitterers, but that’s not necessarily related to their influence. . . . The data the researchers had access to is astounding: 54,981,152 user accounts, 1,963,263,821 social (follow) links and 1,755,925,520 tweets. . . . In the end, what the researchers found was that follower count alone is not necessarily a worthy measure of determining influence.”

See the authors’ research paper.

Judge Tosses Twitter Libel Suit Against Uptown Tenant

Chicago Sun Times: “In 140 characters, the story can be told: A judge has tossed the libel suit against an Uptown tenant for her Twitter post on apartment mold. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane Larsen this week threw out Horizon Realty Group’s libel suit against Amanda Bonnen, who had sent out a tweet complaining about mold in a Horizon apartment. The judge wrote in her brief decision: ‘the court finds the tweet nonactionable as a matter of law’.”

Twitter ‘Number of Followers’ Debate Rages On

Legal Blog Watch: “As I wrote back in August, the number of Twitter followers one has continues to be an extremely misleading metric. This week, Mark Britton, CEO of Avvo, advanced that idea further, writing on the Legal Technology blog that it was time for him to ‘let the cat out of the bag’ and debunk the notion ‘that the number of Twitter followers one has is positively, if not perfectly, correlated to the amount of influence someone has in the marketplace.’ Britton states flat-out that ‘the number of one’s Twitter followers has nothing to do with his or her influence.'”

I agree. On July 14, 2009, I created a Twitter account at www.twitter.com/keytlaw and made one tweet that says “This account is inactive.” Despite that warning that the account will not have any tweets, it now has 55 followers.

Twitter Jitters: Can What You Tweet About Police Land You in Jail?

Law.com: “”SWAT teams rolling down 5th Ave. … Report received that police are nabbing anyone that looks like a protester. … Stay alert watch your friends!” Pennsylvania State Police arrested New York social worker Elliot Madison last month for being part of a group that posted messages like those on Twitter. The arrest took place in a Pittsburgh motel during protests at the Group of 20 summit. In all, almost 5,000 protesters demonstrated throughout the city during two days, and about 200 were arrested for disorderly conduct.

But Madison wasn’t among those protesting on the street. Instead, published reports say he was part of a behind-the-scenes communications team using Twitter to “direct others, specifically protesters of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse.” A week later, FBI agents spent 16 hours in Madison’s home executing a search warrant for evidence of federal anti-rioting law violations.”

Companies Say No to Friending & Tweeting

Law.com: ‘Lawyers are calling it social networking burnout. Back-to-back studies, the most recent issued Tuesday, show a big chunk of corporate America is banning communication wonders like Twitter and Facebook from the workplace. According to the latest survey of more than 1,400 U.S. companies, more than half (54 percent) said they prohibit employees from visiting sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace while on the clock.”