It is based on the Klout Score, a numerical representation of the size and strength of a person's sphere of influence on Twitter.
The score ranges from 1-100 and is defined by the Klout’s formula (pic.), which uses several factors: the size of your engaged audience, the likelihood that your message will generate retweets or spark a conversation and a measurement of how influential the people who retweet, @mention, list and follow you.
According to Klout, the most influential companies and brands on Twitter in 2009 were: Starbucks, AT&T, New York Times, Verizon Wireless, Ford, Walmart, General Motors, Nike, Disney and McDonald's.
As for products, these were iPhone, Android, Blackberry, iPod, Windows 7, TweetDeck, Snow Leopard, Amazon Kindle, Xbox 360 and MacBook.
The full “Influencer Zeitgeist 2009” list could be seen at
klout.com/2009.
January, 2010
