I started my writing career in broadcasting and then got involved in the EUs attempt to create an ARPA-type unit, where I managed downstream satellite application pilots, at just the time commercial satellite services entered the market. I also wrote policy, pre the Web, on broadband applications, 3G (before it was invented), and Wired Cities.

But social media is a very democratizing form of communications and to assess influence you really need to know who is first among equals.

I am so glad to see so many miliar and wonderful people on the Forbes 50 social list. Id take a little time to evaluate a couple names for auto tweeting a bit much. People are busy, I get it. Just dont abuse that Tweet Scheduler, you know what I mean?

What? are they influencing? on what particular topic? WhenWho Are The Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers 2013 - Forbes did it occur? Why? What results did they achieve to make them influential? How did this particular influence penetrate the market? What are the actual produced Quantitative and Qualitative results that can be identified and proven??

For the past 24 months Ive been writing about enterprise innovation here on Forbes.com. Ill continue doing that but increasingly from your point of view - what it means for you to innovate and be creative.

Even the bios of some of these people are so off, its just sad.

That means assessing who has a real following real in the sense of real people and not just bots, real also in the sense that the following is active in social media and not just a passive consumer.

But secondly the data also shows that the 40 people from 11 50 are very tightly grouped and any of them could rise quickly.

As I have stated, I am putting myself out there, to make a popular complaint w/in the industry that I as a practitioner, represent. That said.

;-)

9. Ted Coine. Along with Shawn Murphy, Ted runs the Switch and Shift blog. tedcoine

If youre following over 10,000 people, youre not following anyone. Id say following over 2,000 people is fishy.

I can always rely on a good laugh when you do these posts. Thanks for not disappointing.

my best friends sister got paid $ past week. she has been working on the computer and moved in a $ home. All she did was get fortunate and try the clues shown on this link and go to home tab for more detail BIG76 ℂom

On the scoring, Peek Analytics gives people a score called Pull. If an individual has a Pull of 10x, that means that the audience the individual can reach is at least ten times greater than what the average social media user can reach.

Go 50 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Congrats to everyone on this list. Im so glad to see a lot of my friends on here. You all worked hard t make the list. I was a little surprised not to see Brian Solis on here. Nonetheless, what an accomplishment, congrats! And nice work on pulling this together Haydn.

1. Leaders are more motivational. We are seeing a lot more inspirational messaging via Twitter from this group than we did last year almost as if social media is relegated (or elevated depending on your taste) to motivational relationships. This is becoming an essential part of being a social media leader.

3. It is easier to access. There is a bigger spread of scores here in the top 10 that in the remainder of the top 50 (1000 2000). Those scores are interesting for two reasons.

I used to edit Innovation Management. My book, The Elastic Enterprise, co-authored with Nick Vitalari and described as a must read for companies that want to succeed in the new era of business - looks at how stellar companies have gone beyond innovation to a new form of wealth creation. I speak on new innovation paradigms.

2. It is more gender balanced. The Top 10 this year is equally divided between men and women. Last year it was skewed towards men.

In the top ten this year all the influencers have a pull of between 2,000 and 3,000. This represents influence among a group of peers, whether those peers are in Washington, Palo Alto or Peterborough.

Epicurious while their tweets after the Boston Marathon tragedy were horrific, it still brought buzz, and recognition. While it wasnt the desired type, everybody was posting, sharing, and blogging about it.

I know several of these influencers personally. Many have worked long and hard to get to where they are and have helped/inspired/motivated/made laugh countless people.

7. Liz Strauss. Liz runs successful-blog.com. Shes currently taking on the challenge of cancer. Best wishes. lizstrauss.

6. John Paul Aguiar. An eclectic mix of blog advice, Twitter and other social tools, John is in business to help people make money from social. johnaguiar.

Oreo great social power and influence during the power outage at the Superbowl, gained followers, interaction and buzz.

Hmm, April 17th and we are already choosing who is the most influential via social media for 2013?!

1. Sean, who also writes at Huffington Post, comes in at number 1. Sean blends social media insight with inspirational messaging, a trend were seeing across social. 2morrowknight.

Does creating a clique of followers, and an ability of self promotion really determine influence? or Influence determined by Implementing valid working tools that create Change w/in an industry? Are the people who are allegedly listening industry members. or are the individuals an impact on the Industry as a whole, not just to a specific a group of people who are peers and social comrades of each other who all enjoy the social networking scene.

There are also some basic criteria for involvement experts must be creating their own content, and it has to be about social media. See more on the criteria here.

Being able to get to that essence, of people whose peers are actively involved with them, is why I chose Peek Analytics as the tool to measure influence.

Thanks so much for including me in your list, Haydn Im honored! Im happy that people find my content helpful enough to share with others who are trying to get their arms around social media marketing.

Good point Zachary we shouldnt only be praising people of course. Social media allows all kinds of lazy practices and we need to stand for quality and ethics.

Who are the Top 50 Power Influencers for 2013?

What is the standard/ Criteria to define exactly what their level of influence they are providing to the mass majority of the industry they represent? Who?

10. Pam Moore. Covering Facebook, Google + and the business of social. pammktgnut.

Haydn, the HR / Recruting / Employment industry is a large industry, in ct the 2nd stest growing service industry. So,new york asian escorts what was /is your determination, criteria to determine if an individual is influential? Are they peer reviewed by the changes and tools that they implemented in the industry? Have the established a professional standing of ability and experience from the Massive core of the industry? What is the stand of many in this list, outside of the common denominator that many of them are friends or strong acquaintances with each other? What standard or obligation are they living up to?

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. Youll be notified if your comment is called out.

5. Aaron Lee. Aaron has been strong on Twitter for a long time now, and has a useful website with professional-grade advice but which can also inform people at the beginning of their social media careers. askaaronlee.

The Top 10.

8. Warren Whitlock. Host of Blog Talk Radios Social Media Profit Show, like John, Warrens focus in on social media for profit. warrenwhitlock.

Simply basing data on a program that does nothing but beg people for more looks like nothing more than an advertisement for peekanalytics! And thats exactly what it appears to be. They ask for hundreds or thousands of dollars to measure social data, and Forbes is obviously in bed with them.

Then the list should be very different. Anyone with a 1:1 or 1.5:1 is playing follow/unfollow games and not engaged with people.

I have more than 10K folllowers, but I also use Twitter lists to make sure Im following and engaging/responding.

Hopefully one day we can see these influential lists that will provide a stronger and effective criteria of what determines influence.

4. There are more self-starters. And finally the top ten last year was skewed towards people who had a strong institutional base an employer who allowed them time to do social media. The group below are much more skewed towards self-starters who have made social media their business, or who are advising on how to make social media your business.

Our Real-Time Billionaires scoreboard tracks the biggest holdings for 50 of the worlds wealthiest people. See whos up &p>

Several are specifically helpful to The little guys out there who otherwise cannot afford to spend on social media for their small business. So they have to do it all themselves.

KarenM. Hirecentrix

3. Jessica Northey. Its a trend this year, leading influencers whose base is in a specific vertical. Social MediaFor Jessica it is music. She also says shes moving away from blogging towards Google +. jessicanorthey.

PeekAnalytics agrees. People who follow that many people are not counted as actual followers in the final analysis since it is literally impossible to follow that many people.

The Top 10 Considered

If you want to measure your own Pull, you can do that by following this link.

4. Mari Smith. Mari is a leading Facebook marketing expert and one of the top 10, overall, from last year. Shes also the author of The New Relationship Marketing. marismith.

You could answer that question by saying, of course, they are the people who most influence the biggest brands or have the best selling book or who have been around the business a long time.

2. Ann Tran. Number 1 on the womens list, Ann writes primarily about social media in the travel and hospitality vertical anntran_

That said, the word influence is quite often overused, because it is frequently utilized in a non objective, non attributed way. It is based upon a popularity competition of Who these individuals know, more so than WHAT they know..

I cant help but notice that some people on this list are people that have been doing the follow/unfollow Twitter game for a while. What I mean is they follow a lot of people, wait, and then unfollow whoever didnt follow them. Repeat.

Were any of these people part of or managed the teams that pulled off any of the following campaigns?

The first is that it still looks as though once you hit the top flight either you automatically get more (and more active) followers or your position reflects an ability to cultivate that type of group.

H Karen, thanks for the comment. I explained the process in the earlier post The Top 20 Women (I linked to it in this post). In short the answer is I used the Peek Analytics algorithm and the reason for that was to be sure we had people who had real, active networks. I take the view that social media specialists are influencing real people, not necessarily corporations or the news press and so that is what we tried to get at social media experts influencing their own networks.

MHO There are a few mentioned here who are actual practitioners that deserve the recommend they received, Social Media but at the same time, I have had the opportunity to meet hard working, and effective practitioners who are invoking huge changes w/in the industry that they practice in, but, you may not be aware of them online, because they are too busy working.. and bringing hands on value.

Thanks for your comment Mike the aim of the list in ct is to draw attention to people who work for the little guy not just the big brands.

Hello Haydn,

You forgot to mention David Meerman Scott

I definitely recognized many of the names on the list, however, not all of them are actively involved in Google+ communities, and some not at all. Google+ communities are obviously the largest in terms of social media and internet as a whole today, and it appears this ctor was ignored. G+ communities are much larger than Facebooks Groups for that matter or anything on Linkedin as well. Some of the people you mentioned may have a lot of followers, but this doesnt make them leaders in their field or in social media for that matter. Even some of the most followed people on Google+ have almost completely ignored the Communities feature altogether, they are too busy writing and bragging about themselves to care. Meanwhile the real discussion and activity is happening in communities, with millions upon millions of members, this is where market research is taking a heavy foot hold, as the professionals have come together to find innovative ways to do their jobs better.

I have written for many major outlets like the Wall St Journal, Times, HBR, and GigaOm, as well as producing TV for the BBC, Channel 4 and RTE. I am a research fellow at the Center For Digital Transformation at UC Irvine, where I am also an advisory board member, advisory board member at Crowdsourcing.org and Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research. Google.com/haydn

There is a lot to be learned from many of these people by simply watching what they do and reverse engineering. Theres gold in this article for someone looking to learn.

Some observations on the upper part of the list.

Trust me, Im putting myself out there in asking these questions. Question that has been asked by a core of our industry Practicing specialists.

Im sure some do but there it is, people follow them and listen. We have to accept that there is an element of this in social media not turn a blind eye to it.

Hope you dont pull the trigger this soon in other aspects of your life.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.