Open and egalitarian as Twitter may seem, the social network is actually as hierarchical as any old media platform. So finds data journalist Jon Bruner, who writes in O’Reilly Radar: “Twitter is giant, and it has an outsize influence on popular and not-so-popular culture, but that influence seems due to the fact that it’s popular among influential people and provides energetic reverberation for their thoughts -- and lots and lots of people who sit back and listen.”