Are you counted in the online world?
LESLIE DMONTE 127,000 followers. matically translate into a simi-
POWER PLAY Mumbai, 28 June
Rank Name Followers Aggregate*
WONDERING just how influ-
1 Dalai Lama 1,949,625 87.53 ential you are in the online
2 Salman Khan 790,772 76.89 world? Log on to sites like
PeerIndex and Klout to find out.
3 Actor Siddharth 218,549 76.08
These sites use algorithms to
4 Preity Zinta 678,779 75.54 measure overall online influ-
5 Hrithik Roshan 616,353 75.095 ence, using data from popular
social networking sites like
6 Farhan Akhtar 319,189 73.67 Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.
7 Akshay Kumar 397,843 73.25 This month, an Indian search
engine marketing firm, Pin-
8 Vijay Mallya 456,112 72.72 storm, generated a list of a few
9 Barkha Dutt 310,237 72.62 hundred people or brands of In-
10 Aamir Khan 812,084 72.16 dian origin on Twitter, added
their Klout and PeerIndex
*Tweets + Klout + PeerIndex scores scores and, after securing the
(Source: Pinstorm India Influencers) approval of the users, published
an average of the two scores on
Tips to influence people online: its site. Its a work in progress.

Make your tweets interesting and informative enough to The rankings are updated daily
build an audience at nine am. We receive around
1,000 entries daily, said Ma-

Ensure people are adding you to lists and those lists hesh Murthy, founder, Pin-
are being followed storm. The Dalai Lama tops to-

Ensure the group that messages you is diverse days list (and has maintained
his leadership position online

Dont just broadcast, also participate in conversations for the last few weeks), with

How often are your messages retweeted? around 1,950,000 followers. He

Is it always the same few followers? is followed by actor Salman
Khan with around 800,000 fol-

Are your tweets effective in generating new followers, lowers. Deepak Chopra, with
retweets and replies? around 550,000 followers, tops

How influential are the people who @ message you, retweet you the list of non-resident Indians,
while espncricinfo is the lead-
and follow you?
ing Indian brand, with around
Twitter to measure true reach,
Well be the first to admit
many names may be missing.
Send the names to us, either by
email to info@pinstorm.com or
tweet us @pinstorm. Well add
them over time, Murthy says
on his website. Some of the re-
sponses provide a clue to the
popularity of the site. When
checking the India influencers
list, I found my profile cate-
gorised under Indian residents.
Just wanted to say, I am a non-
resident Indian living in
Dubai, said Debabrat (Debu)
Mishra. I cant find myself in
the India influencers list
http://www.pinstorm.com/ii/find.
My twitter handle is @dhempe.
Can you please check and let
me know when it would be in-
cluded, he said.
How does Pinstorm deter-
mine influence? Murthy says
much depends on how a person
participates in online discus-
sions. For instance, the Dalai
Lama had 553 tweets today. UB
group chief Vijay Mallya (han-
dle: TheVijayMallya) has
456,000 followers and 336
tweets. Gujarat chief minister
Narendra Modi is ranked 11th,
with around 224,000 followers
and 475 tweets.
However, ones popularity
in the real world does not auto-
lar online situation. For in-
stance, Sachin Tendulkar (Han-
dle: sachin_rt), with 117,000 fol-
lowers and 243 tweets, is ranked
78th. Billionaire broker Rakesh
Jhunjhunwala, with 28,140 fol-
lowers, is ranked 99th. Howev-
er, Mahendra Palsule (handle:
ScepticGeek) is ranked 12th.
His 5,551 followers pale in com-
parison to Sachin Tendulkars,
but he scores by tweeting pro-
fusely (24,603 tweets).
Much also depends on the
content of the tweets and the do-
main expertise of the individual.
Its not just enough to have fol-
lowers, explains Murthy. For
instance, Baba Ramdev and An-
na Hazare may have a lot of in-
fluence in the real world but
theyre not on his influencers
list. The fact, however, is that
there are thousands of users who
tweet about Anna Hazare and
Baba Ramdev. In many cases
its not necessarily the celebri-
ties who tweet themselves. The
work could have been out-
sourced to a third party, which
does it with regularity.
The PeerIndex site cur-
rently tracks six million Twit-
ter profiles and its crawler adds
names to its database daily.
Klout, on its part, uses over 35
variables on Facebook and
amplification probability and
network score. True reach is
the size of ones engaged audi-
ence and is based on followers
and friends who actively listen
and react to ones messages,
while amplification score is the
likelihood of ones messages
generating actions (retweets,
@messages, likes and com-
ments) and is measured on a
scale of one to 100.
The PeerIndex team cau-
tions users that one cannot take
any shortcuts to improve ones
online influence. A few days of
frantic activity in one subject
area would not have a measur-
able impact on your scores. This
is also built into our system to
prevent rank-gaming by spam-
mers and bots alike, it states on
its website. The team adds users
should share good quality con-
tent and avoid content farms and
similar low quality content and
items behind paywalls.
Social media experts say
the best way to increase ones
influence in the online world is
to participate more frequent-
ly. It is also important to vali-
date ones accounts with other
services, including Twitter,
Facebook and LinkedIn, so that
ranking sites can capture ones
activity better.