Twitter is now officially hotter than hot. But, where is the Seattle tech/startup community on Twitter? Looking at the numbers, we are getting schooled by the San Francisco/Bay Area twitterers. Do we need to step up?
Remember the lively Seattle vs. Silicon Valley debate last year in blogosphere? Well, good thing twitter followers wasn’t a metric in that discussion…
Comparing the Top 100 Twitterers from the two startup hubs, shows a dramatic difference in twitter influence (aka twitfluence)… the top 100 twitterers in the Valley have an average follower count of more than 4x the top 100 in Seattle. Looking at the national picture, the SF/Bay Area accounts for 33 of the top 1,000. Seattle only has 8 people in the top 1,000.
Like many, I was a skeptic early on: “I already have enough social media tools, why do I need twitter?” In the last few months, my perspective has totally changed. I’ve started seeing great value in the data stream. Now Twitter has become a source for research and market validation, generating customer leads, networking, and driving traffic to our site. My perspective has changed so much that our twitter strategy is a core focus, starting with our twitter contest capability.
There are certainly some people in Seattle paying attention to Twitter. John Cook recently wrote that Madrona brought on an EIR with experience developing twitter apps. Amazon.com has a great twitter presence with amazonmp3, amazon.com deals, and imdb all among the top 20 in the Seattle ranks. ICanHasCheezburger is at the top of the Seattle ranks by a long shot, delivering LOLcats in real time to over 400K followers. Chris Pirillo of Lockernome is the top individual in the Seattle area with well over 50K followers (and is now doing twitter contests).
But the total influence and activity level in Seattle seems disproportionately low for a community of technology companies and early adopters. Do we need to step up our tweeting?
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note: this data is pulled from twitterholic.com – a ranking service for twitter users. SF/Bay Area numbers combine San Francisco, Bay Area, and Silicon Valley. The is directional, not an exact science – many people don’t include location on their profile.
