Will the majority of the top 25 Twitterers be techies on May 2, 2009?
I count 3 - Ev Williams, Kevin Rose and Pete Cashmore
Background:
In commenting on the recent news Business Week columnist Sarah Lacy stated that Twitter was "on the verge of potentially going mainstream in a big way" (http://tinyurl.com/6nkato). That's a pretty strong prediction from a journalist and I follow a lot of them. However, where is the evidence that Twitter is even on the verge of hitting the mainstream in a small way? TechCrunch report that they have around 200,000 active users per week. Even among early adopter tech community Twitter isn't that widely used.
One demographic of the population that it has reached almost complete acceptance (and in some instances road to Damascus type conversions) is among bloggers and journalists. The value of Twitter to that community for finding stories, breaking stories and marketing is huge. Definitely worth the effort of downloading the app, building the friend list, un-following the 'social spammers' and the lost productivity of being distracted all day. For the mainstream it just doesn't pass the cost/benefit test.
If you check out Twitterholic (www.twitterholic.com) you will see that 20 of the top 25 Twitterers are part of the tech crowd. There are five who aren't (Obama (1), HotDogsLadies (7), CNN (8), TastyBlogSnack (12) and Stephen Colbert (24)) although all of them are very popular with the tech crowd. Here is my prediction: In a year's time the majority of the top 25 Twitterers will still be techies.
Settlement details:This will be settled according to a count of the number of tech bloggers, tech entrepreneurs and tech journalists that are in the top 25 of the Twitterholic list (www.twitterholic.com) taken at mid-day on May 2, 2009.
| Yes |
| |||
| No |
|
- Activity: H$123,175 |
- Predictions: 78 |
Comments: 2
Suspend date: Sat 2nd May 12pm PST
Settlement date: Mon 4th May 1:33am PST
Prediction cut-off: Predictions on this question after Sat 2nd May 12pm PST have been voided because they were made after the question could be settled
Initial likelihoods: Yes: 50%
Action history:
keyeshoveden![[Power User]](http://www.hubdub.com/images/icon_superuser.gif "This user is a super user"){kind=icon}
: Hi - can this bre settled now? I wouldn't know where to look for the answer. 
nigeleccles![[Admin]](http://www.hubdub.com/images/icon_admin.gif "This user is an admin"){kind=icon}
: I count 3 - Ev Williams, Kevin Rose and Pete Cashmore 
Suspend date: Sat 2nd May 12pm PST
Settlement date: Mon 4th May 1:33am PST
Prediction cut-off: Predictions on this question after Sat 2nd May 12pm PST have been voided because they were made after the question could be settled details 
Get widget!Predictions (78)
mikpis
predicted No (H$50 at 99%)
felix
predicted No (H$10,000 at 98%)
greggles
predicted No (H$10,000 at 97%)
cookietimeComments (2)
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Andy Borowitz
1. Ashton Kutcher - actor - not tech
2. CNN - tv news show - not tech
3. Britney - singer - not tech
4. Ellen Degeneres Show - actress/daytime tv - not tech
5. Barack Obama - politician - not tech
6. Twitter - I guess this is tech
7. John Mayer - musician - not tech
8 Jimmy Fallon - comedian/actor - not tech
9. The Real Shaq - athlete - not tech
10. Ryan Seacrest - host / "entrepreneur" - not tech
11. Demi Moore - actress - not tech
12. "Diddy" - music producer - not tech
13. New York Times - newspaper - not tech
14. Lance Armstrong - athlete - not tech
15. Perez Hilton - "blogger"? - somewhat tech...
16. Al Gore - politician - not tech (aside from inventing the...)
17. Coldplay - musicians - not tech
18. The Onion - comedy news - not tech
19. Evan Williams - twitter fonder - tech
20. NPRPolitics - news - not tech
21. Kim Kardashian - celebutante - not tech
That's more than enough not tech folks. Even if you count border-cases like Perez Hilton or Al Gore it's not a majority.
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