I love this: if you put a + (plus) sign at the end of any bit.ly URL, it immediately goes to the info page for that link, displaying all those juicy stats, as opposed to the link itself.

For example, instead of entering http://bit.ly/7NBhid, which is the shortened link to my Top 10 Most Popular Twittercism Posts Of 2009 article, I would enter http://bit.ly/7NBhid+, which takes me straight to the data. (By clicking on each of these you can see the difference.)

This is super-useful. Try it.

I plan to do a couple of ‘best of’ posts before the year is out, but first I’d like to have a look at the top ten most popular posts on Twittercism this year, and why.

So, in reverse order, here’s the countdown…

10. CHART: @iJustine’s Plateau Reveals The True Benefits Of Being On The Twitter Suggested User List

Written back in June, this article is one of those ‘long tail’ posts that keeps getting return interest from visitors to this blog, search engines and Twitter itself. And perhaps rightly so, as it (in my opinion) clearly illustrates the benefits of being added to Twitter’s controversial suggested users list (SUL).

The debate in the comments thread was fairly heated, involving noted tech gurus Tim Reilly, Robert Scoble and Dave Winer, as well as the Guardian’s technology editor Charles Arthur, and many others. What’s of interest is, I think, that it really seems to be those on the list who defend it, and tend to describe its benefits as negligible. (This of course works both ways.)

It’s worth noting that not too long after this article was written, iJustine was re-added to the SUL, and now boasts over one million followers.

There’s been talk that there are plans to scrap the list in the new year, and I for one welcome this move, as long as it isn’t replaced by something that is even more insular and contrived.

9. Alan Davies And Stephen Fry: When Celebrities Fail At Twitter

I wrote this article in November after watching Alan Davies go completely off the deep-end when Stephen Fry announced, somewhat foolishly, that he was going to ‘give up on Twitter’, after another user dared to suggest that he might be a little bit boring.

Read the rest of this entry

You may have noticed that Lady Gaga has once again breached Twitter’s trending topics. I wonder what she’s done this time? I know – let’s click on the trending topic directly and find out what Twitter has to say about it.

Um, I don’t think so. As the description actually states, Gaga’s performance on The X Factor was back on December 6. It seems extremely unlikely that this would be trending almost a month later, and doing a little research on the (far more reliable) What The Trend? or What The Hashtag? tells me that the real reason Gaga is trending is because she’s announced a tour in South America, including Brazil, in 2010.

If you look closely, #GaGainBrazil is also in Twitter’s top ten, clarifying the meme. And interestingly, they’ve got the right information there.

It’s a good idea to have explanations about the trending topics built into your own website, but it’s really, really poor that nobody has bothered updating this since December 6. Outdated explanations are of less value than no explanation at all.

Sort it out, Twitter. Hire some better people if that’s what it takes. Because if I have to leave your site to find out what is going on within it, you’ve failed.

UPDATE: Seconds after writing this article, Lady Gaga was removed from the trending topics, which is strange as she was nowhere near the bottom when I began to write it. I’m guessing Twitter favoured booting her off the list and having just the one Gaga-related meme, as opposed to, you know, doing a bit of work instead.

An amusing diversion: FirstFollower.com allows you to quickly and easily see who was the first person who followed you on Twitter.

I wasn’t lying about the President being my first – check the screenshot below, or you can test it for yourself by typing in ‘Sheamus’ into FirstFollower.com. (Or anybody else, for that matter.)

Of course, back in the day Barack followed everybody back, and it would be better if he was actually making those decisions himself, but still, it’s pretty cool.

Who was your first? And are you even following them? Hit the comments below and let me know.

(Hat tip to ReadWriteWeb for the scoop.)

“We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.”
~ Native American Proverb

Prediction (possibly for 2010): Whoever cracks the code that unlocks a really accurate way to measure online clout will be sitting on a goldmine.

Accurate is italicised for good reason. On Twitter, for instance, there are several tools (Twitalyzer, Grader, etc) that will analyse any given Twitter profile and return a score ranking that user against everybody else. But a moment of fun aside, they’re all pretty meaningless as they place far too much emphasis on number of followers, which is a quite redundant (and easily gamed) stat.

So, and continuing to focus on Twitter, where else can we measure clout? How about how often an individual is retweeted? Perhaps, but celebrities get more retweets than anybody – even the dullest of the dull – and while they certainly have a lot of influence on Twitter, that’s not quite the same thing. So retweets as a measure of clout aren’t necessarily reliable.

And it’s worth noting that just because somebody has a ton of clout on one social network doesn’t mean they necessarily have clout on the entire internet. There are lots of giants on Facebook who have absolutely no presence on Twitter whatsoever. Vin Diesel isn’t perhaps the best example of somebody with genuine clout, but with over seven million Facebook fans he’s certainly got a lot of presence, albeit limited to just the one place.

Is a couple of hundred thousand followers spread over two or three social networks more indicative of clout than several million on one? Is a thousand fans on Facebook of more value (in a clout sense) than a thousand followers on Twitter?

And what of the person with enormous offline clout who then becomes an online presence – does that reputation immediately move over from the ‘real’ world to the virtual, or does it take a little (or a lot) more than that?

It seems to be that the most accurate way we currently have to measure online clout is through good old-fashioned word of mouth. And while that is often on the money – good and bad news has a habit of travelling fast – it’s difficult to quantify and many times one man’s social media guru is another man’s snake oil peddler. (More often than not, if the latest research is to be believed.)

I don’t really have an answer here, but it’s a subject that fascinates me. Certainly, I’m curious if online clout – across all of the internet – can ever be accurately quantified and ranked.

I’ll give you an example: Seth Godin has an enormous amount of online clout (and has written an enormous amount about it). Aside from an account that sends out updates from his blog, Seth doesn’t really use Twitter, but if tomorrow he actively started tweeting he wouldn’t see a fraction of the coverage that Oprah Winfrey received when she logged on to Twitter for the first time. Oprah’s ‘real world’, offline clout dwarfs Godin’s, who is an absolute non-entity to your average man on the street. And while Winfrey’s online clout is at or close to zero – it takes just a couple of minutes to browse her Twitter account to realise this – if she ever does or says anything meaningful or controversial within her profile it will always start waves. But who has the genuine online clout? For me, it’s Godin, but for probably 90% of people, it’s Winfrey. How do you measure that? How do you rank it?

So, I’m handing this one over to you guys: please hit the comments and share with me your thoughts and feelings on the elusive, but in my opinion extremely valuable answer to this problem. When you are following a person, be that on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or any social network, via a message board or chat room, or even through an online newspaper or magazine, how do you measure their reputation? Do you have to be told that they’re this great and worthy person, or do you always find out for yourself? (Or both.) And is some clout across many mediums of more importance that absolute clout on just one?

Tell me: how do YOU measure online clout?