influence needs context: lissted & and a top 250 twitter list

Everyone loves a list. A regional newspaper published a list of the most influential Twitterers. We're in it. Woohoo! But what were the metrics? And what was the behind-the-scenes story?

by Adam Parker

Last week the Birmingham Mail and its sister titles published a list created for them by us at Lissted of the Top 250 West Midlanders* on Twitter based on their significance to the rest of the UK.

Reaction to the list has been great, with lots of people getting involved, highlighting the appearance of people they know, or sometimes a bit of self promotion! The list has also generated a number of questions from people about the rankings and who’s on the list and who isn’t.

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measure twice, cut once

by Darren Caveney

I’ve always had a fascination for stats, and a sadly photographic memory for stat-related trivia.   This problem surfaced as a youngster.  As a 10-year old I could reel off the brake horse power and top speed of pretty well any car in my Top Trumps sports cars pack.

I even began to memorise chunks of the more interesting sections of my 1977 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

When it came to football I could bore with the best of them on stats and figures. It partly came from spending too much time staring at Ceefax on a Saturday evening following the day’s results (pages 312 through to 324, for those in the know).

And I could probably tell you the attendance, to within a couple of a hundred, at most of Birmingham City’s key home games in the past 20-odd years.  

 

So, no surprise then, that one of my favourite quotes ever comes from Vic Reeves who once said that “88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.”

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knowing your ABC's

by Darren Caveney

The world has never been more full of stats, figures and data. Bank losses, Facebook numbers, job cuts – the list is virtually endless and the transparency agenda has only increased the numbers maze.

Closer to home, our working world’s are also all about metrics, ROI’s, sales figures...

And our home lives are stacked full of numbers too – bank balances, school league tables, weather forecasts, mortgage rates, the price of fish.

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