As a follow-up to my Dec. 16 “USA Today gets (sheepishly) body slammed by WSJ,” I decided to see where each of these top-10 papers ranked as far as Twitter followers. What I found was surprising…some big dogs are only big dogs in one area! Below are two lists: the print-circulation top 10 (provided by Burrelles, thank you!), and of those ten, the Twitter follower rankings*.
(*I based this on each paper’s official main news Twitter account: for some, this was the only Twitter account; for most, the news account was one of several official Twitter accounts. Followers for each paper are current as of Jan. 8, 2010 at 8:57 a.m.)
Top 10 (Print | Twitter):
1. Wall Street Journal: 2,024,269 | The New York Times: 2,260,850
2. USA Today: 1,900,116 | The Wall Street Journal: 117,737
3. The New York Times: 927, 851 | Los Angeles Times: 48,977
4. Los Angeles Times: 657,467 | The Washington Post: 43,153
5. The Washington Post: 582,844 | USA Today: 38,863
6. Daily News (New York): 544,167 | Chicago Tribune: 23,491
7: New York Post: 508,042 | New York Post: 22,892
8. Chicago Tribune: 465,892 | Houston Chronicle: 7,543
9. Houston Chronicle: 384,419 | The Philadelphia Inquirer: 3,899
10. The Philadelphia Inquirer: 361,480 | Daily News (New York): 648
What makes this super interesting (and exciting!) is a recent Vanity Fair spread, “America’s Tweethearts,” in which six women were spotlighted for their large and in-charge presences on Twitter: social strategist Julia Roy (31,000 followers), publicist Sarah Evans (33,000 followers), travel journalist Stefanie Michaels (1.4 million followers), actress Felicia Day (1.6 million followers), lifecaster Sarah Austin (24,000 followers), and marketer Amy Jo Martin (1.2 million followers).
Three of these women have more Twitter followers than any of the top-10 papers except the NYT; and all of them are giving each paper a run for their money…at least on Twitter.
A-mazing! Congrats ladies. You’re paving the way for the rest of us!
abbymalikPR 