A string of TV and film hits have made Ricky Gervais a familiar face in Hollywood, but a new study claims he is also the most influential Twitter user in London.
Social media analytics company PeerIndex conducted the research, which measured the tweets of 1.1m Londoners and how influential they were on others in the city.
The company’s calculations assigned Gervais the highest “London PeerIndex” (LPi) score of 97 out of 100, putting him narrowly ahead of writer Caitlin Moran; Made in Chelsea stars Lucy Watson and Jamie Laing; musician Ed Sheeran; footballers Mezut Özil and Jack Wilshere; and Stephen Fry, who all scored 96 on the scale.
With London mayor Boris Johnson planning a return to parliament as an MP, he ma be disappointed to learn that he only ranked 27th with a score of 93 using PeerIndex’s formula – behind current Prime Minister David Cameron, who ranked 10th with a score of 95.
As with previous charts published by the company – journalists in 2011 and UK Twitter users in 2013 – PeerIndex is digging into Twitter’s “firehose” of data on tweets, retweets and mentions.
The latest study analysed data from more than 200m Twitter accounts, but excluded parody accounts – bad news for @samuelpepys there – as well as “content-only” Twitter accounts, for example from media companies.
“We applied a special rule: only influence from other Londoners counted. Every area is a community, and London is a particularly strong, if diverse, community,” said founder Azeem Azhar. “Our top lists are the people who most influenced other people from the capital.”
The chart sees politicians and journalists rubbing shoulders with footballers, reality-show stars, musicians and YouTubers. PeerIndex claims that the list reflects positively on Londoners’ online interests.
“It’s a rich and diverse audience interested in sport, music, politics and, perhaps most of all, having a laugh. There are more comedians in this list than any of the other places we’ve looked at,” said Azhar.
The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, ranked 70th in the chart with a score of 90. He was joined on the list by fellow Guardian journalists Owen Jones (9th) and Hadley Freeman (88th).
Only 29 of the top 100 accounts as ranked by PeerIndex are women. “Great to see so many feminist tweeters in #London100 but only 4 women in top 30. Twitter reflects wider inequality,” suggested the @EverydaySexism account, after the list was published.
PeerIndex has published the full chart online.
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