• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, November 1, 2012

Earlier this month, LinkedIn gave users the ability to follow a group of “influencers” from Barack Obama to the company’s own founder, Reid Hoffman. After the first couple of weeks, billionaire Richard Branson has emerged as far and away the top thought leader of the bunch, with nearly 760,000 followers.

A new leaderboard set up by LinkedIn shows the Virgin founder well ahead of Obama, with about 380,000 followers, Deepak Chopra (187,000), Mitt Romney (154,000) and Arianna Huffington (123,000). Branson’s five tips for starting a successful business has also proven the most popular of the 850 influencer posts published to date.

Besides the leaderboard, LinkedIn today introduced other ways for users to access this content, including the ability to find influencers who have posted most recently or sort them alphabetically.