Last week, Education Next revealed its 2012 list of the Top 30 Education Policy Tweeters.  For this year’s list, Petrilli used the newly formulated Klout scores, featuring a new algorithm that is supposed to provide a stronger look at one’s true online influence.  A lot goes into those new Klout scores, making it one of the few real measures of online reach.

Last year, @Eduflack was 22 on the Top 30 list.  This year, we were honored to check in at number 21, sharing the ranking with EdWeek’s Politics K-12, Education Trust, Education Sector, Students First, New Schools Venture Fund, Dana Goldstein, the Frustrated Teacher, Nancy Flanagan, and Petrilli himself.  

As Petrilli and company were releasing this year’s list, another interesting news story broke — that of “phony” Twitter followers.  According to recent digging, 71 percent of Lady Gaga’s Twitter followers are fake, and similar estimates put upwards of 70 percent of President Obama’s Twitter followers on the fiction list.

So EIA’s Mike Antonucci decided to take a look at how the Top 30 Education Policy Tweeters stack up when one accounts for those “faker” Twitter accounts.  The list almost flips itself, with EdNext #1 @arneduncan slipping to #24, with only 68 percent of his followers active, real members of the Twitter universe.

Surprisingly, yours truly came in #1 on the EIA list, with 91 percent of my followers genuine, active followers on Twitter.  (For the record, I do a regular purging of my Twitter account via ManageFlitter to remove the fakes and unfollow those who have left the beloved Twitter wilderness.)

So with EdNext, EIA, and others, should we be following Klout scores?  Total followers?  Real followers?  Or does it even matter?