U.S.News & World Report Tumblelog

Is the number of social media followers you have a poor measure of your influence?

Twitter Cofounder Suggests A Replacement For The Follower Count

[Twitter cofounder Ev] Williams suggested that, after the recent restriction of Twitter’s API, which was intended in part to usher users back to the site’s official apps, collecting deeper engagement data wouldn’t be a problem. With fuller control over apps, he said, Twitter could, for example, “measure whether or not a tweet was requested in a timeline” — indicating that it wasn’t just made available to a user, but actually read … ight now it’s hard to tell if these non-tweeting users are actually seeing anything you tweet — that is, unless you’re an advertiser. The stats tools Twitter offers to partners may offer clues as to what the new follower count would be comprised of.