Yesterday, Onalytica released their report, announcing the top 100 big data influencers, and top 100 influencing brands, based on analysis of the #BigData hashtag on Twitter. The study analysed 403,185 #BigData tweets from 69,894 users, and used their unique influencer identifying technology to determine these users’ social clout.
Whereas many technologies designed to determine influence place heavy emphasis on the number of followers a brand or individual possesses, Onalytica take a much more dynamic approach. Influence is determined not only by the number of followers and level of engagement, but the quality of those followers & shares. Onalytica’s influencers are key players in the larger influential network in their domain, meaning their voice is amplified by the quality of their community.
Onalytica’s “Key Influencer” definition- source
Top 5 Big Data Influencers
Based on Onalytica’s research, the top 5 big data influencers on Twitter are:
1. Jeremy Waite– It’s no surprise that Jeremy Waite- a man with 2 decades of brand consultancy and marketing experience- topped the list. He is currently the Head of Digital Strategy, Marketing Cloud EMEA for CRM juggernauts salesforce. His “80 Rules of Social Media” is a must-read for anyone with a social media brand; number 7 is our personal favourite.
2. Bernard Marr- Bernard Marr is a bestselling business author, strategic consultant, Dataconomy contributor and all-round fountain of knowledge within the big data space. If you don’t follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn already, we highly recommend you start.
3. Kirk Borne- Kirk Borne is a data scientist, PhD Astrophysicist, Dataconomy contributor and big data influencer. If you’ve read a great big data story today, there’s a 90% chance Kirk has already tweeted about it.
4. Kenneth Cukier- Kenneth is The Economist’s Data Editor, and his social media accounts are a treasure trove of insightful data-related projects and articles. He also co-wrote “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think” by Dataconomy interviewee Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, who appears at number 6 on the list.
5. Gregory Piatetsky- Gregory is the President of KDNuggets, who have been covering innovations in the fields of analytics, data mining and big data for almost 20 years. They were, to our knowledge, the first media platform dedicated to big data, and have remained at the forefront ever since.
Top 5 Big Data Brands
1. IBM Big Data- The Twitter account of IBM’s Big Data Division is a masterclass in big data branding. Their Twitter feed effortlessly blends promotion of IBM’s latest innovations with fascinating stories from the big data field.
2. BigDataEXPO- It’s no surprise that one of the biggest big data events on the planet is also one of the most influential social brands on Twitter. You need only scroll down their Twitter feed to see how highly and consistently engaged their community is.
3. CIO.com- A company that needs no introduction, @CIOonline is great resource to keep up-to-date with the latest developments from big data and beyond, across a wide spectrum of technologies.
4. World Bank- The fact that an organisation whose mission is to combat poverty on a global scale appears so high on this list makes for compelling evidence that Big Data for social good is firmly on the agenda.
5. Cloudera- Cloudera is the leading enterprise Hadoop vendor, whose seriously impressive funding and innovations in 2014 proved Hadoop is still a technological heavyweight in the big data space. If you need further evidence that Cloudera have their finger on the pulse of big data, be sure to check out our interview with their Director of Data Science on the future of machine learning.Â
Be sure to check out the full list of Big Data Influencers here.
All images courtesy of Onalytica.
