Ronan tweeting: Singer in the zone for followers

LADY Gaga may have been crowned Twitter queen, or ‘Tween’ as the outlandish one is calling herself, but in Ireland, Ronan Keating reigns supreme.

The Boyzone frontman – whom Gaga would probably wear as a hat if she got her hands on him – is the top homegrown celebrity with Twitter followers, some 74,226 of whom hang on his every tweet.

Yesterday that meant they were reading he was “gutted” that Aussie actor Matt Newton had pulled out of hosting Australian X Factor on which Keating is a judge. Twitter fans will have had to look elsewhere to discover that Newton was dumped amid allegations of violent assaults on his ex-girlfriend. Such are the limitations of the 140-character tweet.

Keating’s main rival in Twitterland is also a competitor on the boyband circuit as Nicky Byrne of Westlife is next in the list of celebrities with 38,851 followers reading him shamelessly promote the band’s appearance on a webcast.

But neither of them come close to the most followed Tweeter in Ireland as recorded by monitors Twittercounter yesterday. They awarded the top spot to the non-celebrity MacTweeter – the Twitter site of the people who make Apple Mac computers and iPhones.

Even more bizarrely, second place went to a lifecoach called Sinead Duffy, who pushed radio star Chris Evans into third place. And it gets weirder because in fourth place, ahead of Keating, was Robosteel, a crowd who make art from recycled metal.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean Twitter fans are all computer nerds, art heads or people in mid-life crisis – it could just mean some Tweeters ‘buy’ their followers.

IT consultant Damien Mulley, of Mulley Communications, says it is possible to falsely increase a following by bulk-buying a status as a follower of other sites that automatically respond to your own. “You do see people who start up and within five days they have 25,000 followers. That’s probably because they’ve bought them. There is a lot of ways to rig a following and Twitter is full of marketing ‘experts’ showing you how to get thousands of followers just like them,” he said.

“The real test of a following is the quality rather than quantity. If followers are genuine and trust you, you’ll find they click on links you recommend. Stephen Fry has crashed websites by merely mentioning them in his tweet because he has so many real followers.

“Marketing people have seen that potential and they pay celebs in the US to mention their products, but it will only work for them if the celeb has real influence. That means having followers who are genuine and who trust the tweet.”

There is a real appetite for Twitter in Ireland and thousands of real followers. The last comprehensive survey, in January last year, put Ireland as 15th in the word in terms of Twitter users and that was in real numbers, not a per capita calculation.

“We were ‘noisier’, as its called, than China. They may have taken over by now, but certainly Twitter is big in Ireland. But then for a long time we’ve been among the biggest in the world for mobile phone use and text messages, so it follows on that we would embrace Twitter too.”