Hundreds of suggestions and countless tweets later and we have finalised our PeerIndex list of the most influential UK journalists.
We have used PeerIndex, which ranks social capital. It does this by algorithmically mapping social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
We decided to go one step further and put the list of top journalists into Klout, which also ranks by overall online influence. Klout only allows 10 names in a list so we entered the top 10 names in our PeerIndex list. Klout has reordered them. You’ll will need to sign in with Klout to see this link (no embeddable code so a screen grab instead).
Azeem Azhar, founder of PeerIndex (and formerly of the Guardian and the Economist) explains that PeerIndex calculates social capital using “maths very similar to that which Google uses to calculate its page rank”.
“And the thing that we like most about it is that it’s driven by what other people say abut you rather that what you say about yourself.”
You can hear more from Azhar, including why technology correspondents tend to get a higher ranking than fashion or politics correspondents, below.
Our PeerIndex top 100 list certainly had some response. Here is a Chirpstory highlighting some of the tweets.