The Top 40 Geospatial Twitter

Twitter has come to replace much of the following that we used to do through traditional feeds. It is questionable why this has happened, but perhaps one reason is in the efficiency of breaking news from the mobile and the possibility of filtering into lists that leave out content that is not of our interest. In my case, I monitor using Flipboard, but in practice every day the content I see there is more than filtered Twitter accounts and some sites that I know update with clear periodicity.

It is clear, the content of Twitter has a life span of hours, something like the traditional printed newspaper; Nobody looks at a content from two days ago that has gone to the abyss, just as yesterday's newspaper was barely used to wrap meat and cover piñatas. Twitter, unlike Facebook, has a more impersonal use, with many results for the notification of news; Hence, it is used a lot by artists and almost any company that looks at what is coming in the future with an Internet based on influence. In the case of the publication of blogs specialized in a topic, the content remains for life, being revitalized as Google indexes it and recycling more visitors and comments. Of course, the downside of the blog is that the rate of publication is slower, leaving much of the new or foreign content to go to your Twitter accounts. Also many bloggers decide that their thing is not Twitter.

Today I want to list 37 accounts linked to the geospatial theme that I keep track of, some of them I have been monitoring for a while. I have called it Gran Cola in an image that was leaked a couple of days ago, in reference to the model that in this digital world contradicts the traditional Pareto scheme, making each account worth the contribution it makes to the ecosystem, where the value is not in the star products but in the sum of the whole spider web. Half of this was just theories in strange classes at Universities, and there is still a moment that is still difficult to understand:

Today, a superaccount would not do much with a twit, If there is not a series of Retwits that distribute the news to the social web. In the case of print publications, a large run was large on its own.

We have done before pursuit and account recommendation, the last one was just a year ago. Today I am going to use the exponential trend, to segment this group of 37 accounts into at least 5 segments, using May 24, 2014 as a reference. Although this list is marked by the Hispanic focus of Geofumadas, it includes 12 accounts in English and two in Portuguese.

Let's see what we call the Top 40 of Geofumadas on Twitter.

The Top Geospatial, large Twitter accounts.

Applying an exponential method to the 37 accounts, it reflects an intersection trend of 13,920 followers.

4 of these are of Anglo-Saxon origin (marked in Red) While one of Portuguese origin (marked in Verde), then there are four of Hispanic origin, although we are aware that Red Engineering and Blog Engineering are not really specifically for the geospatial segment, we place them there because they are a benchmark for accounts that can grow competitively, as well as Gerson Beltrán who is one of the few accounts with a personal name in this entire list.

This whole segment shows significant differences between one and the other, with jumps that are almost in the 20,000 followers, against which they are in the line of the trend graph in the 7,000 followers.

Above the trend line are accounts between 10,000 and 20,000 followers. You will hardly change this in a future review that we will do in December:

1. @geospatialnews      19,914

2. @gisuser       16,845

3. @engineered 13,066

4. @blogingenieria 12,241

5. @MundoGEO        11,958

6. @gersonbeltran 9,519

2 are exactly on trend, equally separated from the rest of the queue:

7. @gisday 7,261

8. @directionsmag 6,919

Something interesting about this first segment, too, is the scope of digital magazines linked to the promotion of global events, which leave to the next level magazines that traditionally existed in print, such as the cases of GIM International and GeoInformatics.

The rest of the Geospatial Accounts Queue

Notice that if I separate the previous accounts, I have a new graph where you can distinguish four groups, starting precisely from the Geofumadas account, with a tendency intersection of almost the 5,000 followers.

If we represent the same graph in a distributive way, we see a more representative vision of what is in this collection of 29 accounts, in segments of 25% each, which we call Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4:

Q1: 3 accounts

Just 3 accounts represent the 25% of accumulated followers, being Esri Spain is the only software account that I am including, for being an interesting reference in the geospatial sector.

9. @geofumadas 4,750

10. @Esri_Spain 4,668

11. @URISA        4,299

In this segment is Geofumadas. It has been an interesting experience in particular, from my initial aversion to a model in which I saw no foundation, to the evolution we now see in the following FollowerWonk charts:

This was in December 2012, when we had only one node greater than 100 followers in Meso America and one in Spain above 400. The orange nodes represent dozens and the blue nodes less than 10 followers.

This was before we reached the first node of 1,000 followers, and just one in the United States.

This is the current map of our followers. With a super node in Spain, two in the United States, one in Mexico and three in South America, including one in Brazil.

Q2: 5 Accounts

This 25%, unlike the previous one, has three Anglo-Saxon and two Hispanic accounts. This shows the delay of those who neglected to enter Twitter at the indicated time, despite being a reference in the Anglo-Saxon environment, as is the case of Geoinformatics, which even lost the opportunity to reserve the name and had to acquire Geoinformatics1. Also interesting is the case of MappingGIS which is relatively new but has climbed aggressive steps, and the Orbemapa account is also here, which is quite inactive and possibly in the next revision it will be in Q3.

12. @Geoinformatics1           3,656

13. @pcigeomatics      2,840

14. @mappinggis 2,668

15. @orbemapa 2,541

16. @Cadalyst_Mag           2,519

Separating the growths "Non-natural", which only bring discredit and little authority to an account, it is also interesting to see, that the growth "natural” on Twitter is trending at roughly 25% a year in accounts that don't exceed 10,000 followers. So, the longer it takes to enter a company "That should be on Twitter“, more territory will gain your competition. A gap remains unless significant effort is made to improve publication quality, originality, and consistency; so that 500 followers difference between one account and another could be constant.

Q3: 7 Accounts

Here we have an account of Portuguese origin, and only two of Anglo-Saxon origin, precisely famous magazines in print format (Point of Beginning and GIM International). Hopefully the IGN Community account, which is quite inactive, and NosoloSIG is already here, which is recent but with sustained growth.

17. @gim_intl     2,487

18. @ClickGeo     2,239

19. @Geoactual 2,229

20. @Tel_y_SIG 2,209

21. @nosolosig 2,184

22 @POBMag     1,754

23. @comunidadign 1,731

Q4: 13 Accounts

This list could be endless, with accounts ranging from 500 followers to 1,600. Only two are for content in English.

24. @gisandchips 1,643

25. @comparteSig 1,520

26. @masquesig 1,511

27. @COITTopography 1,367

28. @egeomate           1,339

29. @revistamapping 1,277

30. @PortalGeografos 1,259

31. @NewOnGISCafe           1,187

32. @SIGdeletras 1,146

33. @franzpc 1,105

34. @cartolab 787

35. @ZatocaConnect 753

36. @Cartesia_org 540

37. @COMUNIDAD_SIG 430

In 6 months we will do a new review, to see what has happened. It is likely that some account that we have left out will be considered to handle a total of 40, the chart only has 28 and not 29 as in the list. Our selection outside of being capricious is due to accounts that we frequently follow from Geofumadas, so if you know an account that exceeds 500 followers and you consider that it has a disciplined publication ...

The suggestion is welcome!

Here you can see the List of this Top40 on Twitter