• ReadWriteWeb, Tuesday, February 15, 2011 12:14 PM

If their aim is influence, anyone who's spent the past few years feverishly racking up tweets and Twitter followers should take a breather. Why? Because it isn't the "most prolific tweeters or those with [the] most followers" who are steering the conversation, according to Bernardo Huberman, director of HP Lab's Social Computing Research Group. On the contrary, as ReadWriteWeb points out, "long-standing status as a source of information and news," is what mostly determines Twitter's Trending Topics.

As such, "We found that mainstream media play a role in most trending topics and actually act as feeders of these trends," said Huberman. "Twitter users then seem to be acting more as filter and amplifier of traditional media in most cases." According to HP's report, there are 22 Twitter "users" who dominate the Trending Topics. Of those 22, 72% were Twitter streams run by mainstream media outfits such as CNN, the New York Times, El Pais and the BBC. Top individual influencers included Ashton Kutcher and Lady Gaga.

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