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Twitter Users Most Followed by Readers of Hacker News: Updated & Expanded

72 points by jeffmiller 16y ago

I originally posted this list 3 months ago (July 2010). I've since improved upon it. Now the list has been expanded to 200 people (previously 100). Hacker News usernames are shown wherever possible. I've also posted a link to a CSV file which contains the full list up to 1,000 people. And a cron job will automatically regenerate the list once a week.

royrod 16y ago
Very nice. Would be cool to see how people moved up/down since July :)
charlief 16y ago
The unofficial ycombinator tweet didn't have a link embedded for this submission. EDIT: changed official to unofficial, thanks riklomas
- riklomas 16y ago
  Ah, that's my fault actually, it occasionally chokes on punctuation (especially ampersands), I plan to fix that this weekend. It's not an official Y Combinator twitter feed by the way, it's just something I knocked up in my spare time.
roadnottaken 16y ago
Nice hack. Very good idea. I keep wanting to give Twitter a whirl but I never know who to follow, thanks.
flipbrad 16y ago
I don't consider myself a hacker, so am not best placed to pass judgement, but... it seems like the true hacker ethos is not to swim with the stream, and yet here is pretty clear proof that hnews has formed its own stream. How many hackers here check the list and de-follow anything not in the long tail, fearing getting caught-up in groupthink? I apologise in advance if this causes offence; stream or not, I still have tremendous respect for this very high calibre community.
- chrisduesing 16y ago
  This list was generated organically, rather than handed down from on high. It is not a decree to unfollow anyone not on the list, but rather an opportunity to see a list of people on twitter that other intelligent people with similar interests follow.
- forensic 16y ago
  >it seems like the true hacker ethos is not to swim with the stream I don't think so. The hacker ethos is about being clever and hacking stuff. Hackers don't do things differently just to be different. They do things differently because they see the world differently. The reason there is a "hacker community" is because hackers meet each other and say "No shit! You do that too! I thought I was the only one!" Like any good community, it's about commonalities.
  - flipbrad 16y ago
    absolutely. but groupthink is a well-known phenomenon. hackers are very original people, and originality tends to get lost in large groups, no?
    - forensic 16y ago
      Groupthink is a well known pitfall of any group. But not all groups engage in groupthink. Organizational psychologists talk about ways to reduce and/or avoid groupthink in an organization or community. If you believe that Hacker News is suffering from groupthink, you should present evidence of that, and then the community could take action to try and reduce it. Personally I don't see it. I strongly doubt anyone is deleting people off their twitter based on this submission.
tyng 16y ago
This reflects what the HN community represent, and we are certainly not all hackers. Entrepreneurs? Perhaps. Notice a lot of VCs got pretty high up on the list.
byrneseyeview 16y ago
This would be more interesting if you added one more column, dividing the number of HN followers by the total number of followers. @Shitmydadsays has 1.8 million followers, but the people ahead and behind that account on this list each have <30K followers. Clearly, those accounts (@al3x and @dhh) are more Hacker Newsy.
- dshah 16y ago
  Agreed, that would be interesting to see. If nobody else does it, I'll try to crank something out this weekend.
- jeffmiller 16y ago
  Done. I added a 2nd table. Reload and scroll down to see it.
andrewparker 16y ago
Would LOVE to see this weighted by the each user's HN Karma score. For example, a user with 1000 Karma who follows Harj should be worth more than a user with 10 Karma who follows Lessig.
yatsyk 16y ago
nice, added to http://hnresources.com/hackernewsers/ http://hnresources.com/hackernewsers/
hubb 16y ago
i'm a little surprised steve blank is so low. his blog entries are usually a great read
maxklein 16y ago
Nice, I'm on the List. I guess my one year experiment worked.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tlrobinson 16y ago
  Me too. I'm pretty sure mostly because of the list of Hacker News members on Twitter I maintain: http://twitter.com/tlrobinson/hackernews http://twitter.com/tlrobinson/hackernews Also, I noticed the first time this was posted I got a bunch of new followers. It's kind of a self-reinforcing list.
DotSauce 16y ago
I remember when @PaulG joined Twitter he quickly gained several thousand followers in a few hours via a link from Hacker News. This data is based on only 400-500 users. I would say the majority of the Hacker News community is left out.
addoway 16y ago
Very nice indeed. Could you put a tracker in it to show the change month over month? Also could it show the people not on the list that are almost there etc?

72 points by jeffmiller 16y ago

royrod 16y ago

Very nice. Would be cool to see how people moved up/down since July :)

charlief 16y ago

The unofficial ycombinator tweet didn't have a link embedded for this submission. EDIT: changed official to unofficial, thanks riklomas

riklomas 16y ago
Ah, that's my fault actually, it occasionally chokes on punctuation (especially ampersands), I plan to fix that this weekend. It's not an official Y Combinator twitter feed by the way, it's just something I knocked up in my spare time.

roadnottaken 16y ago

Nice hack. Very good idea. I keep wanting to give Twitter a whirl but I never know who to follow, thanks.

flipbrad 16y ago

I don't consider myself a hacker, so am not best placed to pass judgement, but... it seems like the true hacker ethos is not to swim with the stream, and yet here is pretty clear proof that hnews has formed its own stream. How many hackers here check the list and de-follow anything not in the long tail, fearing getting caught-up in groupthink? I apologise in advance if this causes offence; stream or not, I still have tremendous respect for this very high calibre community.

chrisduesing 16y ago
This list was generated organically, rather than handed down from on high. It is not a decree to unfollow anyone not on the list, but rather an opportunity to see a list of people on twitter that other intelligent people with similar interests follow.
forensic 16y ago
>it seems like the true hacker ethos is not to swim with the stream I don't think so. The hacker ethos is about being clever and hacking stuff. Hackers don't do things differently just to be different. They do things differently because they see the world differently. The reason there is a "hacker community" is because hackers meet each other and say "No shit! You do that too! I thought I was the only one!" Like any good community, it's about commonalities.
- flipbrad 16y ago
  absolutely. but groupthink is a well-known phenomenon. hackers are very original people, and originality tends to get lost in large groups, no?
  - forensic 16y ago
    Groupthink is a well known pitfall of any group. But not all groups engage in groupthink. Organizational psychologists talk about ways to reduce and/or avoid groupthink in an organization or community. If you believe that Hacker News is suffering from groupthink, you should present evidence of that, and then the community could take action to try and reduce it. Personally I don't see it. I strongly doubt anyone is deleting people off their twitter based on this submission.

tyng 16y ago

This reflects what the HN community represent, and we are certainly not all hackers. Entrepreneurs? Perhaps. Notice a lot of VCs got pretty high up on the list.

byrneseyeview 16y ago

This would be more interesting if you added one more column, dividing the number of HN followers by the total number of followers. @Shitmydadsays has 1.8 million followers, but the people ahead and behind that account on this list each have <30K followers. Clearly, those accounts (@al3x and @dhh) are more Hacker Newsy.

dshah 16y ago
Agreed, that would be interesting to see. If nobody else does it, I'll try to crank something out this weekend.
jeffmiller 16y ago
Done. I added a 2nd table. Reload and scroll down to see it.

andrewparker 16y ago

Would LOVE to see this weighted by the each user's HN Karma score. For example, a user with 1000 Karma who follows Harj should be worth more than a user with 10 Karma who follows Lessig.

yatsyk 16y ago

nice, added to http://hnresources.com/hackernewsers/ http://hnresources.com/hackernewsers/

hubb 16y ago

i'm a little surprised steve blank is so low. his blog entries are usually a great read

maxklein 16y ago

Nice, I'm on the List. I guess my one year experiment worked.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tlrobinson 16y ago
Me too. I'm pretty sure mostly because of the list of Hacker News members on Twitter I maintain: http://twitter.com/tlrobinson/hackernews http://twitter.com/tlrobinson/hackernews Also, I noticed the first time this was posted I got a bunch of new followers. It's kind of a self-reinforcing list.

DotSauce 16y ago

I remember when @PaulG joined Twitter he quickly gained several thousand followers in a few hours via a link from Hacker News. This data is based on only 400-500 users. I would say the majority of the Hacker News community is left out.

addoway 16y ago

Very nice indeed. Could you put a tracker in it to show the change month over month? Also could it show the people not on the list that are almost there etc?