Professionals, executives, politicians and even billionaires are obsessed with ‘Lists’. Most magazines publish their own lists of successful people. I have frankly lost count on how many lists I get exposed to on a monthly basis. I have now stopped paying attention to them. But one list got my attention yesterday.
Pinstorm India published a list of most influential Indians in Social media based on their tweeter handles and rankings by Klout & PeerIndex. Being a keen student of the space I went through the list. While Pinstorm acknowledged that this is not a complete list and invited people to send in names. Most people on that list was no surprise. Film Stars, politicians, cricketers, and people from digital, advertising & marketing industry. One prominent name was completely missing – Anand Mahindra (@anandmahindra). Incidentally he is a verified account and registered with Mumbai as base location. Some other politicians with large followings are also missing Omar Abdullah, Sushma Swaraj, Narendra Modi etc. Many of them are listed simply because they have thousands of followers like Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He has tweeted only 19 times between 18 to 23 Sep 2010 to promote his live chat on Facebook. I wonder why is he called influential because he only has followers but no influence as he doesn’t tweet. There are many such celebrity examples in that list.
What shocked me though was a tweeter handle called @moneymunot. Today this person is ranked at 74 (yesterday he was 73) with only 140 people following him with only 62 tweets in total. I quickly checked out his profile and found that all his tweets are in last 2-3 weeks. Many of them are mere responses. On top of that he himself said I don’t want to be on this list. Wonder why is he there? Because someone just sent his name? Here is the example.
I do admire Pinstorm as a company but this effort was certainly below my expectations. They actually diluted the word ‘influencer’.
