A new study from the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto has mapped the locations of the most followed Twitter users, and in this one measure of mass culture, Los Angeles completely dominates the competition. How about this for free publicity: Los Angeles is home to 125 of the 500 most followed Twitter users--they have a collective audience of 285 million people. The runner up, New York, has 89 of the top 500. Atlantic Cities blogger Richard Florida (most famous as the urbanist behind the term "creative class") posted the map of the "twitterati" today.
Perusing twitaholic's Top 500 list, we couldn't help but notice that a lot of SoCal's famous residents are shy about where they live. @KhloeKardashian (#29) says she resides in Heaven (we can assume that's metaphorical), and @chrisbrown (#30) says he resides on Earth (which is debatable--besides, we know he lived in West Hollywood until very recently). And apparently there is too much drama in the LBC: @SnoopDogg (#37) says he resides on the moon, but that might have something to do with smoking an ounce a day or whatever.
Florida explains Los Angeles's dominance of the Twittersphere thusly: "Attention, it is often said, functions as an increasingly important currency in the post-industrial world. Between Hollywood and Madison Avenue, New York and Los Angeles are world capitals of celebrity and branding--it is only to be expected that they would dominate the twitterverse's attention economy as well."
· Where the Twitterati Live [Atlantic Cities]
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