Who Makes Twitter Great for You?

With everyone talking about how few people actually Twitter, I wanted to take a second to reflect on those that make Twitter great for me. See, even though the following facts are true, I still enjoy Twitter:

A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely. Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.

At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production.

-source: Harvard Business Publishing

Everyone on Twitter has a few core people that they couldn’t bring themselves to unfollow. Be it because they are friends, family or because they say such amazing things that you couldn’t see yourself removing their nuggets of information from your daily stream.

Mine include the following:
@WTL – he is a good friend of mine in Ottawa that keeps my spirits up and Tweets about things I am interested in.

@markfox – my cousin, a fellow geek, and online gaming squad member.

@JimKukral – Inspiration to me in many different ways. Stays positive, works hard, and has interesting ideas that he follows through on.

@chrisbrogan – Another amazing inspiration to me. He is also a crazy Twitter conversationalist. Very friendly, helpful, and interesting to read, even just in 140 characters.

@jamescogan – Tweets some interesting business and new media stuff, as well as a few Canada specific things. Runs a media network with dozens of websites, on some pretty amazing Canadian domains.

@joetek – Brilliant guy, lots of fun, and posts great stuff on Twitter. He is one of the few people that ReTweet things I am interested in, acting almost like a Twitter filter for me.

@collis – The guy just exudes success. It will either make you very excited about working on the web, or very jealous. Depending on the day, I go one way or another.

@mike9r – I’ve been a fan of his design, his blog posts, and just the way he looks at the world. He’s been able to keep up that certain vibe on Twitter, and is fun to follow. He gives previews of his work, and some interesting opinions on various things.

Of course, I can’t list everyone I follow, nor all of the people that are great on Twitter, but those are my “key” people on Twitter that tweet at a decent pace, and that Twitter wouldn’t be the same for me if any of them left.

Who are the people on your Twitter list that you just couldn’t unfollow?