When Twitter launched their list feature recently, I immediately wondered if #FollowFriday was going to go the way of the dinosaur. For those out there not using Twitter, you have the power to "follow" people of interest and see what they are saying. By following people of similar personal or professional interests, you get an idea of what is happening in real time.
As you begin to follow people, you are exposed to more and more who can really offer interesting things to say.
Because I wanted to read about what's new in Tech, I followed Leo Laporte, founder of the TWiT® Netcast Network. Because I wanted to read about entrepreneurs and start-ups, I followed Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo.com. Because I wanted to read about Project Management, I followed Dave Garrett, CEO of Gantthead.com. Granted, I didn't just go out and follow them at random. I followed others and patiently waited for Friday to arrive to see who they would recommend to Follow. Though I enjoy this organic process of discovery, it is not particularly efficient. Though the introduction of lists has allowed me to see similar people in large numbers, there is no guarantee it is nothing more then a popularity contest.
Who shall I follow and who shall I recommend to follow? Alas, I am but one person. Who am I to suggest who you should follow and who you should not? I will yield my recommendation to one I consider superior in the decision making process. I yield to what James Surowiecki termed the Wisdom of the Crowd and a nice webapp created by The Plan Is.
It appears The Plan Is tracks all tweets tagged with #pmot and uses them to update a list of the most influential project managers on Twitter. Updates are calculated continuously and new results are displayed every 5 minutes. They won't tell you how the scores are calculated, as that would make it too easy to game the system. It appears ranking is based on the number of followers, volume of tweets being retweeted, and the number of lists appeared on. I may be wrong. But, the list appears pretty accurate. Go on Twitter and look at the hashtag #pmot. If you say (tweet) something interesting, it gets retweeted. If people like to read what you're tweeting, you'll get followed. What I like about this dynamic reputation score is there are NOT people out there tweeting "vote for me, vote for me". It just seems to work.
So, you're a new Project Manager, Scrum Master, Agile aficionado, or Kanban practitioner on Twitter. Who do you follow? Who has the best reputation, from the crowd point of view? Follow the links below and find out.
Project Managers on Twitter
- DaveG253: 2175 points
- francisojsaez: 1800 points
- projectmgmt: 1685 points
- ProjectShrink: 1400 points
- Qtask: 1400 points
- JohnEstrella: 1135 points
- pmstudent: 1100 points
- franciscojsaez: 980 points
- thesambarnes: 915 points
- PM_StrayDogg: 835 points
If you would like to see a list from an Agile perspective, there's a list for that as well.
Note: The 10 Project Managers in the list above were dynamically generating at the time of this post.