JTA Publishes 2010 Twitter 100

On December 30th, JTA published its 2nd annual JTA Twitter 100 List, a ‘Who’s Who’ of Jews in the Twitterverse. Social media is connecting us in ways our grandparents never would have imagined and allowing us to play Jewish geography on epic scales.
This year’s Twitter 100 changed a bit from the 2009 list – only individuals and organizations who were nominated this year made the list. The JTA used Twitalyzer, a popular social media analytics tool to rank the nominees in weighted categories such as number of retweets by other users and impact/influence. In other words, it wasn’t an entirely scientific process (since only nominated accounts were considered) but the nominee pool was sorted by fair competition (avoiding flashbacks to 8th grade student council votes for all involved). JTA states that the list “represents a metrics-based approach to Twitter usage of a select group of individuals over a particular period of time who were nominated by their peers. All limitations nonwithstanding, we believe this list is still a useful guide to determine who is steering conversation about Jewish life on Twitter.”
Some of my own favorite Tweeps made the list. Self-proclaimed funny guy @benjilovitt comes in at number 5 (follow him for milk-out-your-nose looks at life as an oleh in the ‘war zone‘) and awesome Web 2.0 Jewess and social media maven @kvetchingeditor comes in at 22 (follow this very ‘out’ convert who dishes on life as a Jew, gluten-free challah and other ordinary/extraordinary daily life musings). Of course, the list is filled with NPO leaders/organizations (@aipac makes the list) but you were following them already, right?
And it’s no surprise that a few have fallen off the list this year. Those with a local connection who made the list in 2009 but not in 2010 include: @JewishArtMusuem (run by local art maven Paige Dansinger), @toolsforshuls (Rabbi Hayim Herring, whose profile lists him in Minneapolis even though I’ll admit that it’s not a familiar name) and  @israelconnection (Eric Rosenberg’s behind the curtain. Born in SLP and one of my good friends. Probably one of your cousins).
All of it gets me thinking – who are the local Jewish Twitterati? A few come to mind without even thinking (@LeoraMaccabee, @GalitBreen, and others on the TC Jewfolk team) but I know there are more out there. Who would you make sure is on the list? (Hint, hint, there’s going to be a list in the coming months and we want to make sure we don’t miss anybody).
Find TC Jewfolk on Twitter @TCJewfolk and connect with us there for bite-sized bits of conversation, in 140 characters or less. It’s kind of like those 100 calorie packs – enough to tide you over until your next real check in with the Jewfolk. And, keep your eyes open for those new TC Jewfolk lists to come in the new year including a list of our regular writers and a list of local Jewish Twitterati (don’t worry – we’ll never add anybody who doesn’t either already publicly call out their Jewish identity or who doesn’t nominate themselves for the list). And next year? We might just post our own Twitter 100. Or 36. MSP isn’t that big after all.
(Twitter logo from Twitter)