The season finale! The end of my experiment with metrics

Recap: I'm at the end of a month-long experiment tracking the Top 500+ Twitter users (based on Followers). I decided to look at the growth rate of these accounts to see what, if anything, it indicated about Twitter culture.

Here are last week's fastest growing accounts with the SU indicating Twitterers who have been placed on Twitter's Suggested User list.

Fastest growing Twitter accounts (5/18/09-5/24/09):

1. The Best @s (@BestAt) 406% SU
2. Rob Riggle (@RobRiggle) 208% SU
3. Dwight Howard (@DwightHoward) 150% SU
4. Ethan Suplee (@EthanSuplee) 137% SU
5. Sarah Brown (@SarahBrown10) 98% SU
6. John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) 95% SU
7. Dr. Sanjay Gupta (@SanjayGuptaCNN) 92% SU
8. Bill Simmons (@SportsGuy33) 86% SU
9. Moby (@TheLittleIdiot) 82% SU
10. Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) 74% SU
11. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (@KAJ33) 74% SU
12. Roger Erik Tinch (@CineVegas) 74% SU
13. David Archuleta (@DavidArchie) 69%
14. Next to Normal (@N2NBroadway) 65% SU
15. Jack Gray (@JackGrayCNN) 64% SU
16. Justin Timberlae (@JTimberlake) 63%
17. Billy Ray Cyrus (@BillyRayCyrus) 54%
18. White House (@WhiteHouse) 54% SU
19. Rania Ab Abdullah (@QueenRania) 49% SU
20. Michael Ausiello (@EWAusielloFiles) 49% SU

SU=Twitter's Sugested User

This week, the growth rates were down from the three previous weeks and ordinary (non-SU) Twitterers returned to being 15% of the list, up from 5% last week. I think this might be due to Twitter slowing down the new additions to the Suggested Users list which has grown from 20 users in February to 226 in May.

I've also noticed that although Suggested Users dominate the fastest growing Twitter accounts, users are being selective, they are not choosing "all" and adding the whole entire roster. Suggested Users seem to have their fastest growth rate in new Followers in the second & third week after being added to the list.

Here are the fastest, naturally growing accounts:

Fastest organically growing Twitter accounts (5/18/09-5/24/09):

1. David Archuleta (@DavidArchie) 69%
2. Justin Timberlake (@JTimberlake) 63%
3. Billy Ray Cyrus (@BillyRayCyrus) 54%
4. Jordin Sparks (@TheRealJordin) 33%
5. 106 & Park (@106AndPark) 33%
6. Emily Osment (@EmilyOsment) 32%
7. Paris Hilton (@BabyGirlParis) 31%
8. Stephen Colbert (@StephenTColbert) 23% (Faux account)
9. Kristen Stewart (@KristenStewart9) 23%
10. Rev. Run (@RevRunWisdom) 22%
11. Eminem (@Eminem) 22%
12. Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) 22%
13. Katie Price/Jordan (@MissKatiePrice) 22%
14. Pink (@Pink) 21%
15. Stephanie Pratt (@StephaniePratt) 19%
16. Busta Rhymes (@BusaBusss) 19%
17. Katt Williams (@KattPackAllDay) 18%
18. Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) 17%
19. Kid Cudi (@KidCudi) 17%
20. Brandi Cyrus (@TheBrandiCyrus) 17%

As in previous weeks, the fastest, organically growing Twitter accounts are dominated by pop culture figures, specifically young actors & singers (pop & hip-hop/rap) with much a larger representation of women and African-Americans than on the Suggested User "hot" list. It's an interesting contrast between those people Twitter wants to promote and pop culture figures that new users are seeking out on their own.

And, as noted last week, growth in Follower numbers for the Top 500+ Twitter accounts continues to slow down. Like last week, a slightly higher 75% of the top accounts had a weekly growth rate of 10% or lower with 4.6% accounts having 0 or negative growth.

This has been an interesting, if time-consuming, project and I'll have a blog post about general conclusions I can make after this four week project. I haven't decided whether to continue to collect the data but, as far as this blog is concerned, I'll move on to other topics or, at least, other aspects of Twitter...and the rest of life!