Twitter mulls a replacement for follower counts

Weve all seen the social media experts who signed up for Twitter accounts yesterday and have eleventy-billion followers today, and we know they didnt get them without cheating. Now Twitter might be considering a replacement metric for follower count that more accurately measures how influential users are.

Speaking at a BuzzFeed panel in New York yesterday, Twitter co-founder and board member Evan Williams said that reach is a much more important measure:

The dream metric is how many people saw your tweet.

Engagement is certainly the metric that matters to marketers: if people dont see your message, they cannot act on it. But follower count has long been a source of perceived legitimacy for some, and Twitter has previously taken steps to reduce its impact. Twitter even completely hit the... [via VentureBeat]