Before you scroll down. Before you read any further. Just guess.
Who do you think it is? Who is Portland’s top tech Twitter type?
I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought it was probably Marshall Kirkpatrick. Or Josh Bancroft. Or maybe even Scott Kveton.
But I was wrong…
Let’s start from the beginning
You see, I get a great deal of Silicon Florist fodder from Twitter. Interesting tidbits. Snippets of conversations. Clues about what’s happening where. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
And while I don’t think there is ever one single good way to rank things, I do have to admit that I find the Portland Start-up Index to be an interesting way of looking at things.
And then there was Aaron Hockley crossing the 5000 tweet mark last night.
And that got me thinking. I began to wonder: Who is at the top of the Twitter heap when it comes to Portland startup and tech types? Who has the most “influence”? Who is the holder of the mythical “Twitter juice”?
I had a fitful sleep of metric-ridden dreams, last night.
So, this morning, I—very unscientifically—started combing through the Portland metropolitan area Twitter types. Trying to figure it out.
After some fits and starts, I had gathered a number of folks from the area. I had their number of followers, the number of people they were following, and the number of updates they had.
Some of the more prolific people weren’t exactly “tech” or “startup” types, so they were the first ones I cut them from the list.
Then, I looked at the number of updates that these folks had. And I cut some of the people with lower numbers of updates.
Then, I looked at the number of followers each of these people had. And the number of people they were following.
To me, it seemed that influence has something to do with the number of people who listened each time a person updated. But, logically, not all of these people were listening from day one, and because of that, a direct multiplication would be inaccurate and misleading.
So, I massaged those numbers a little. And mucked with some of the weighting. Then I took all of that unscientific research and ran it through the Silicon Florist 5000.
And guess what it spit out? I was surprised. And I was wrong with my #1 guess. I’m willing to bet you were, too.
And the #1 isn’t the only surprise.
So here’s what I came up with:
Portland’s top tech Twitter-ers
- (For reference) The Oregonian
- Aaron Hockley
- Scott Hanselman
- Alex Williams
- Scott Kveton
- Tim Lauer (Okay, maybe not exactly a “tech” Twitter type, but given his use I’m throwing him in here.)
- Verso
- Matt Haughey
- Raven Zachary
- Paul Colligan
- Sarah Gilbert
- Audrey Eschright
- Jason Grigsby
- Steven Frank
- Dawn Foster
- Josh Pyles
- Betsy Richter
- Sam Lawrence
- Jason Harris
- Simeon Bateman
- Jake Kuramoto
- Michael Buffington
- Holly Ross
- Jessica Beck
- James Keller
- Rael Dornfest
- Chris Brentano
- Justin Palmer
- Greg
- Peat Bakke*
* Within a hair of the 30th 31st 32nd 33rd spot were Eddie Awad, Justin Kistner, and Chris Griffin.
Now, again, fairly unscientific. But interesting nonetheless. (I had a number of other models for ranking, but this one seemed to do the most justice for the larger group.)
No matter what the case, there is one thing for sure: this is a great group of people to follow if you’re interested in keep track of Portland tech.
Did I miss you? Think I’m off? I’d love to have your input. And I’ll be happy to adjust the list, as needed.