Today programme Twitter rivals: Mishal is overtaking Evan

Twitter is all about engagement, the quality of the interaction and the kind of people you’re in touch with. (Not that some people are more valuable than others of course just because they’re famous or whatever, but… well, you know what I mean.)

Anyway - just for fun - I’ve been checking the number of Twitter followers of the Today programme presenters. And a small milestone is about to be been reached. Evan Davis, until now far and away the front-runner, will shortly be overtaken by the programme’s newest presenter, Mishal Husain. I’m sure neither of them is in slightest bit concerned or would have even noticed.

I only noticed because I recently came across an old newspaper from the time when Mishal joined the programme. It gave their Twitter follower numbers then. Over the past few weeks I’ve been updating the figures. Here’s how Evan and Mishal’s follower numbers have been growing:

What’s interesting is the steadiness of the gradient of each line. There’s a longer gap in time between the figures I got from my old newspaper and those I’ve recently compiled, but my recent updates produce data points that follow the same line rather precisely. However Follower numbers grow, they seem to do so in a very regular way.

Do we each have a kind of Twitter fingerprint that determines follower growth?

If such a thing exists, it might be revealed by something like Twitonomy, a service that analyses various components of the behaviour of a Twitter account.

I ran Evan and Mishal’s accounts through Twitonomy and here’s how they compared:

(Unless you subscribe, you have to take the date range Twitonomy offers, which is slightly different between the two accounts. But the samples are for more than two years and I think it’s reasonable to compare figures per unit of time.)

So what can we see about Evan and Mishal’s tweeting characteristics?

• Number of tweets: Evan does more tweeting than Mishal (an average of 4.29 tweets a day compared to Mishal’s 3.81). Clearly, more tweeting is likely to increase your follower numbers, but the figures show it’s by no means the critical factor.
• Retweets: When it comes to retweets, the two accounts are identical, with 9 per cent of their tweets being retweets.
• Hashtags: Mishal uses more than twice as many hashtags as Evan - which means that more of her tweets will turn up in hashtag searches and therefore will be exposed to new people.
• Mentions: Evan refers to more other Twitter handles in his tweets, although they’re both pretty high on this score (Evan in 94 per cent of tweets; Mishal in 85 per cent). If you refer to another Twitter handle its owner will be told, so it’s another way of ensuring attention.

What’s not quantifiable is the editorial content of two accounts, but we can see the reaction to it. A higher proportion of Mishal’s tweets are retweeted (44 per cent against Evan’s 30 per cent). Again, as with hashtags, that means she gets greater ‘coverage’ in terms of spreading awareness of her account.

I’ve had a look at some of the most retweeted tweets on their recent timelines and here’s the kind of thing that’s had a lot of retweets:

Evan:

Need a few minutes of procrastination? Play this addictive game and help scientific research into music and memory http://ow.ly/yg5V3 

...47 retweets

Mishal:

None of this should matter but @PeterGreste is a fine journalist and a thoroughly decent human being. Peter - your BBC friends are with you

…77 retweets

Broadly, Evan and Mishal’s accounts are comparable; all these differences are on the margins. That becomes obvious when you put them in the context of the other Today programme presenters. (John Humphrys has apparently been a Twitter refusenik since 2009.)

Here, I’ve simply shown each presenter’s number of tweets and number of followers. (I’ve multiplied the number of tweets by 10 in each case, to make both bars comparable sizes.)

But strangely, in those terms, the winner by a mile is Jim Naughtie, because he’s managed to acquire 21,000 followers for a mere 117 tweets. That’s 179 followers for every tweet. Evan’s comparable figure is just 16.

I’ve written before about what I’ve called the Twitter Potency Index, which is my attempt to inject the idea of time management into discussions about tweeting. Again, like follower numbers it’s not what your average social media guru likes to focus on.

But, hey, tweet me on @BBCollege and we can generate a bit of discussion about all this, and maybe pick up a few followers too.

The College of Journalism's social media resources