A former Edmonton-based media observer and strategist released a new report of the city’s top 200 social media influencers last month and several notable St. Albertans made the list.
Jay Palter has prepared this list for Calgary for a few years now but this is the first time that the capital has made its appearance on his social advisory website, www.jaypalter.ca.
“It’s not a definitive list of the cool people on social media in Edmonton,” he clarified, indicating that the names were actually produced as the result of running software called Little Bird that uses algorithms to determine who is an “Influencer” also known as an “Insider,” all sourced by the keyword “Edmonton.”
“It analyzes people’s online activities and then organizes them. There’s a group of 8,000 individuals and businesses that tweet about Edmonton and conduct online activities and communications about Edmonton. It looks within that topical community to see who is following each other.”
The list was generated based on a dataset of 7,972 online identities and ordered after Little Bird analyzes which among them is followed by the most others within the same dataset. An Insider score of 458, for example, means that 458 other Insiders are following that person’s account.
“As a former Edmontonian, I’ve spent the last five or six years getting to know the people on the list.”
The list was released Dec. 18, 2015. At the top of them all was Edmonton’s mayor Don Iveson, with an Insider score of 3,596. He also obtained a Listening score of 868 (referring to the number of Insiders he himself is following) and an Emergence score – a measure of how rapidly he is rising up the list – of 1.408550378.
At numbers 13 and 14 are Scott McKeen and Josh Classen. McKeen, current Edmonton city councillor for Ward 6, was a longtime columnist for the Edmonton Journal. Before that, he served in an editorial capacity and as a city hall reporter for a few years here at the St. Albert Gazette. Classen is the meteorologist for CTV Edmonton.
Classen’s teammate, CTV morning news anchor Stacey Brotzel, comes in at 17 while Bridget Ryan, the host of Dinner TV on CITY and children’s book author, is 19.
Marty Chan, the Morinville native who has become a prominent children’s book author and noted social media snark, arrives at the 63rd spot. This month, he became the newly installed regional writer in residence for the Metro Edmonton area. He will spend a few months in Strathcona County then Fort Saskatchewan before arriving for the fall term in St. Albert.
The list continues with former MLA Thomas Lukaszuk at 77 and Ken Bautista, the proprietor behind St. Albert-based former new media business Hot Rocket Studios and now the entrepreneur behind Startup Edmonton, was at 80.
Media designer and poet Kasia Gawlak came in at the 188th spot. She’s the daughter of former Gazette editor Sue Gawlak.
McKeen, Classen, Ryan, Brotzel, Chan, Lukaszuk, Bautista and Gawlak were all reached out to through Facebook for comment. None replied.
