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The Top 15 Twitter Users & Influencers in Dubai (that have the word Dubai in their profile)

It’s a tricky one to work out – who is who on Twitter – who is worth following and who should be paid lip service.  One thing is clear is that those people (Mention no names) that are quite clearly using automated tools to only drive recruitment are not faring well in the influence space.  Why – well there are a multitude of reasons but I guess it starts with how the hell you actually measure Influence or I suppose “Tweetefluence” in the first place.

Diggs Wefollow (and we can’t get access to the algorithm so this is hearsay) seems to measure influence based on the number of users that respond to your tweets, click on your links, add you to lists and the conversations you are having.  It’s interesting to note that one of the most influential users on Twitter in Dubai “ADNATION” www.adnationme.com   www.twitter.com/adnationme doesn’t have a million followers but does have a lot of conversation threads going on – what does this mean for Twitter in communications departments – well I suppose it’s the same old mantra – conversations are king when it comes to twitter and social media. 

This is not to say that automated tools don’t have a place, we use a mixture of automated tools and scripts in combination with a developer account to try and work out who we want to engage but I can assure you the majority of the work is very much manual. That said since using our Twitter account to strike up relevant conversations our little (or not so little these days) team at H2O has driven a large amount of business using this free tool for B2B in the past couple of months.

I should paraphrase this by saying that these results from Digg are skewed anyway as the algorithm seems only to be based on the keywords in the users profile – but hey ho you can’t have everything.  I am still sure that major news channels and publishers knock the spots off of Tweeters – but still it’s  interesting to see who the top 15 Tweetfluencers  (with the word Dubai in their profile) are , let me put you out of your misery.  It was going to be 20 but I just got sidetracked by everyones blogs so now its just a lazy 15…..Press Read More

Number 2    www.twitter.com/Catboy_Dubai
Raconteur, bon viveur, cad, rapscallion, hedonist, gastronome, broadcaster – Has the benefit of a radio show behind him but let’s face it this chap must be on Twitter all of the time as he responds to pretty much everyone.  I wonder if he has a trained monkey locked up in his cupboard responding for him, and even then I wonder if it’s a hedonistic monkey – Like a fruity gibbon or something. He has 10167 followers as of today.

Number 3     www.twitter.com/adnationme
News and community website for Middle East marketing and advertising industry, not just because they are our customer as I am not that kind, but in all honesty the quality of commentary is excellent and they obviously have a major line into the regions advertising sector, only 934 followers but they all seem to count.  If you are interested to see what is going into those magazines that clutter your reception area for months this is the place www.adnationme.com

Number 4     www.twitter.com/DubaiLife
Admittedly an English perspective, follow blogs of locals and various expatriates and headlines from local news media. A news aggregator that has a large number of follower’s www.thedubailife.com 31,815 followers

Number 5     www.twitter.com/ seodubai
A high ranking group of consultant experts of different nationalities with their professional involvement, continuously and dedicated to the technology of (SEO).  That’s Search Engine Optimization for the layperson. They have 17,500 followers, many of whom are into SEO in a big way by all accounts.  Although not the world’s most interesting topic it is a critical subject for us techies! But let’s face it given the choice between a night out with the SEO team or a party at Hugh Heffner’s pad? Take a look at their site they certainly know a lot about SEO and it’s a good resource for newbie’s http://www.seodubai.org/

Number 6    www.twitter.com/dubaiexplorer
You've read about five-star hotels, limitless luxury and never-ending skyscrapers. Now it's time for the rest of the story.  These are the guys that make those nifty little books that you buy at the airport and read once or twice normally whilst sat in a hotel room wondering what the hell you are going to or when you first get your 4x4 that subsequently goes as off road as Satwa parking lots 1,518 followers

Number 7    www.twitter.com/AshrafGhori
Visual Artist | CG FilmMaker - Xero Error – That has time traveling experimental cyborgs in it – to be honest anyone that engages in any way shape of form with time traveling experimental cyborgs has my vote.  If there is one thing you take out of reading this post visit his website, it is fantastic http://www.xero-error.com/xblog  4,119 followers (Large Artistic and Teen following)

Goodness I am only on number seven, why did I start this post, I have things to do. Time for a break - oohh thats good

Number 8    www.twitter.com/pamelafrey
An eco-friendly, environmental & humanitarian activist, contributing millions of Grafdom's CSR budget towards worthy causes. Obviously some way shape or form involved with www.grafdom.com IT consultancy 12,410 – general mix of demographics so I am guessing uses automated software but kicks out a lot of interesting tweets.

Number 9    www.twitter.com/DubaiWriter
Freelance Copywriter, Editorial , PR , corporate wife and mum to 3 feral kids . Based in the Desert of Dubai, and stuck here as long as the mortgage is so high, and the equity negative.. Keeping on keeping on..... Motherinferiordubai's Blog – a good mixture of internet knowhow and witty word smith skills, so good in fact I wish there was an RSS feed. 795 followers http://motherinferiordubai.wordpress.com 

Number 10    www.twitter.com/DaddyBird
DaddyBird may have recently put Dubai in his profile, however he has the most amazing tash in the history of tashes so I like him by default.  Interestingly he gets long involved spam email, all in English, offering him... courses in learning English. www.livingthetravelchannel.wordpress.com worth 45 minutes of anyone’s time and apparently 58 minutes of mine! How will I ever finish this blog post!!  1,598 followers

Number 11    www.twitter.com/h2onewmedia
That’s me – Well you are already on this blog and our website link is above it – I have 6593 followers – with at least 2,000 of them intent on showing me low cost ways to loose my body fat and 2,000 others wanting to show me how to user twitter to make money.

Number 12    www.twitter.com/danstuart
Serial online adventurer; head of strategic initiatives at bayt.com;  I don’t want to give Dan too much of a write up because he twittered that my opening start at the social media forum was “Slow” and this is my revenge.  Check out www.bayt.com  1,407 followers

Number 13    www.twitter.com/itsdgc
Canadian. Business reporter for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Again another hour surfing a blog – David-George Cosh has nothing nice to be said about airports. Nothing. His blog is also that of a professional writer which makes me ashamed that I plough out such nerdy un-witty drival on this one.   926 followers

Number 14    www.twitter.com/derrickpereira
Blabbing all things travel, tech and photography. Random Rambler is the personal blog of
Derrick Pereira, a tech junkie, world traveller and photography enthusiast living in Dubai. Check out the photo blog – http://www.randomrambler.com/photoblog/p/2 456 followers

Before you rush off and start making friends with everyone keep in mind that this is just a sub-list of users based on their profile and its most certainly not a fully accurate list of who has the most twitter influence, and of course you need to keep in mind that influence as it relates to you isn’t going to be the same for other people.  If you need help with exactly how to manage twitter either call us or bring in your own tweeps.  A secret inside tip - Follow this dude - http://twitter.com/osouthgate and I would suggest his blog if you are in the Social Media Sector.  http://osouthgate.co.uk/

Comments (17)

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written by Nicolas, July 29, 2010

Great list Steve, good to see some reference to wefollow (although it isnt used much in this part of the world)

@Rita, Pamela doesnt 'steal' links from other twitter accounts, she uses an twitter feed application to receive alerts on her twitter account and share with others. All twitter power users have similar apps installed from api, hootsuite, twitterfeed to ping and many others. Feel free to browse the accounts of the top 100 and you'll get the point.

And, sharing links to other sites is actually giving others credit, thats the whole purpose of twitter!

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written by drewbie, January 03, 2010

doesn't dubizzle's twitter have like 1000 fans...isn't that one of the biggest in dubai??

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written by Dubai Informer, November 12, 2009

Thank you Steve

Since we are No. 1 on your list we cant really disagree with the whole article, but of course any such ranking is different for every user. Every one of us Tweeps wants a different kind of news and can combine his own favorites to his special news-stream. So it is kind of tough to make a "general" list of twitter-influence.

We don't think Newspapers should be on top since they have already their old established channels and Twitter is one of the newer ways to get some different news in a completely new way. And especially in a Sheikhdom like the United Arab Emirates one shouldn't really rely on the government owned newspapers alone we guess ;-)

The main thing is that everybody gets their news, this is the reason for us to run our local news network and the amount of readers shows that at least some people like it exactly the way it is ;-)
So thanks again Steve

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written by Steve Vaile, November 11, 2009

You are welcome but it’s not my list of course, the list was a simple breakdown of the blogs on We Follow but I guess people don’t always read a blog post, if there is a list they probably just read the list and make assumptions on that basis. The We follow list which bases influence on an algorithm that no one really understands (as stressed)

I am sort of regretting I put this list out now, it was a simple “interesting information let’s look at the users content blog posts” it was really only interesting from my own personal perspective. Not really a major faux pas on my side but I should have put BASED ON WE FOLLOW NOT MY TAKE in big red letters above the list. We live and we learn.

Now however the post seems to have developed competition for influence “Rating” on other blogs which are now running public votes on twitter influence. In my book that’s really not cool; I don’t really like this approach to sensationalizing voting. Although I can understand the traffic benefits of developing it for the owners of the website running the vote, in my own personal view it really doesn’t serve any purpose apart from building some people up, alienating others and creating a list that probably isn’t accurate anyway. It probably isn’t that good for reputation of the company running the poll as well as people will clearly see it for what it is. Of course this is entirely my take on it; your opinion may differ and is no less valid than mine.

It is certainly not my list of top twitter influence's in Dubai, if it was then you would simply be made up of HHR Sheikh Mohammed and all of the major news channels and that would be more accurate than a vote, why? Because these are the users with the gravitas to communicate actual news and fact rather than generate “Chatter” however. I have looked at some of the other influence based rating engines as well such as Twitter Grader and again I don’t think the information is accurate – “influence” in these cases doesn’t match up to my idea of the word.

For me the whole benefit of twitter is that the influence and information flows from the group of the user base, it communicates sentiment and breaking news by aggregating information “Bubbling Up” as Oliver would put it.

That all being said of course people are free to do what they want online, so the choice is ultimately yours. Personally I would rather focus on putting my efforts this week into helping to define some of the ROI metrics from social media which seems to be a more urgent requirement than a pi**ing competition on twitter. My two cents.

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written by Mohammad Zaher, November 11, 2009

thanks man. It's an honor to be on your list. keep up the good work.

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written by Oliver Southgate, November 05, 2009

Well Steve, you have opened the can of worms!

As the 98th most influential person in Dubai (ever) I have to put my foot down, ok it's down now, influence is always debatable, that's why Steve has custom picked 15 people, although he says it is compiled from wefollow.com but I don't believe him, these 15 however, happen to match the top 15 people on wefollow (coincidence) based on the number of mentions and tweets.

That is all it is, nothing more nothing less, just an automated list based on an algorithm, call it SEO of the twitter world!

We don't mean to offend or upset anyone, sorry Rita.

Oliver

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written by Steve Vaile, November 05, 2009

As I say dont shoot the messenger and read the email at the top of the list - the data is taken from Diggs Wefollow.com not Steve Vailes head! I have not caused such a controversy have I? Its not like i have been caught dancing naked with Prince Philip at 3am on Buckingham Palace Lawn ......at least not this time i haven't!

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written by Steve Vaile, November 05, 2009

Hi Rita thanks for your posts, as social media experts we may well have been aware of this sort of thing, but just not posted, or not as the case may be The influence based metric is taken from Diggs Wefollow - Its not based on followers but response activity - as per the boring bit in front of the post.

The Shaddow - I agree Alexander Mc Nabb needs to be in this list, but I am not sure if he has Dubai in his profile, as per the front bit of the Blog Post.

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written by Rita, November 05, 2009

It's very easy to verify if you just take the time to do research that's a little bit deeper before putting out a list like that. Or do you just look at the number of followers and decide the bigger that number, the more influential the person is?

PamelaFrey basically changes the links, but keeps the headline the same, and does not credit the original source. All you have to do to verify my accusations is to search for the string headline from her Tweets and you will easily see the original source and that most of those headline were posted hours or minutes before PamelaFrey posted them. She steals all those links from well established websites and never credits them. This in itself is poor Twitter etiquette; as social media experts, I would've thought you would be aware of this sort of thing.

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written by dan, November 05, 2009

Touche my friend!

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written by Copywriter in UAE, November 05, 2009

You might also want to try the ranking on many algorithms (not just followers) here (I think it's pretty good): http://twitter.grader.com/location/?Location=dubai

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written by Oliver Southgate, November 05, 2009

I don't really call tweeting other peoples content stealing, it is promoting! If PamelaFrey is providing value to her followers then that is a good thing, if not they will leave.

What the issue is here is how influence is measured, now if I could influence how influence is measured I would become influential and therefore influence you all and probably profit by spamming you all with tweets from my amazon associates account :-)

I am of course the one and only Oliver Southgate (@osouthgate) (osouthgate.co.uk) - and I say that as I re-tweet pretty much everything and my 8 followers love it (isn't that right Steve, H2O, @chrisbrogan, @Scobleizer et al)!

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written by theshadow, November 05, 2009

I'd question:

Dubai Informer? Their tweets are normally stale, not very interesting and they don't seem to engage in two way conversations with anyone.

Dubai Explorer - Their books are great but haven't seem anything worth following from them.

I'd add:

Can't believe you forgot @djbliss on there, who is one of the busiest guys in Dubai, one of the most active twitters and who still finds the time to respond to nearly anyone who tweets to him.

Also, in terns of influence, you'd have to be batty not to give a nod of the cap to @alexandermcnabb ,who manages to tweet quite a bit of interesting stuff which gets people talking, even if he's not so into random two way conversations (which arguably at least keeps him relevant)

And then there's @jamesed_me, one of the brains behind TEDxDubai, who also holds great influence, even if he's also so not into random two way conversations.

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written by DaddyBird, November 05, 2009

The truth is: Actually my wife @kangayayroo does most of the posts on our blog. I get a few in there, but she's way more prolific than I am. I really need to get caught up with her!
Actually "Dubai" has been on my profile for quite a while. I did recently update it to be more specific by adding "Deira" to it, because I love living in Deira!
Thanks for the kind words!

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written by Eliot Beer, November 05, 2009

Thanks for the third place - although in the interest of fairness and impartiality, I should point out Steve/H2O may be slightly biased when it comes to AdNation, being as he is our site developer...

(NB - because there's generally some confusion over this - AdNation isn't owned/run by H2O, just developed. That is all. Carry on...)

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written by Steve Vaile, November 04, 2009

Are you sure, that's a pretty serious allegation how do you know that? I would expect use of a bulk adder based on the volume of followers against the engagement metrics. How do you know?

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written by Rita, November 04, 2009

Sorry but PamelaFrey steals all her links from DIGG Twitter accounts primarily. She rarely has any original content on her tweets. So all the 'interesting Tweets' that she kicks out, are basically stolen from other Twitter accounts.

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