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How Many Twitter Users Have Over One Million Followers?

Some people are happy with 100 followers; others, 1,000. Some don't care at all, while others have dreams of hitting 100,000. Twitter is a vast community, and many of its users are content creators or curators, so it benefits those people to maximize their following. Now over 5 years old and with more than 200 million users, I was curious to see how many accounts have entered the Million Followers Club.

According to my research, there are nearly 700 Twitter users with one million or more followers—691 at the time of writing this, although someone new enters the club about twice a week these days. The most recently added member is actress Christina Applegate, and rapper Lupe Fiasco looks poised to be number 692. This club represents about 0.00003% of total users, so it's a very exclusive membership. 

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Google Reacts to Twitter's Response in Civil Manner, but We Know That Blood is Boiling

Yesterday, Google announced salient changes to its search engine. Most notably, it placed an emphasis on Google+.

We’re […] introducing three new features:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page; 

2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and, 

3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community. 

This immediately caught the eye of venture capitalist and tech journalist MG Siegler, who called the move "a slippery slope for Google" and believes the U.S. Justice Department will launch another antitrust inquiry on the company as a result.

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HootSuite Indexes What's Hot on Twitter: RIM Was the Top Canadian Brand in 2011 [INFOGRAPHIC]

What's the top brand on Twitter? Why, Twitter, of course.

Vancouver startup HootSuite today released Part 2 of its Twitter 2011 Trends, courtesy of What the Trend?, a company it acquired in 2011. An infographic indexes a few lists such as the top 15 brands on Twitter, the top 10 trending topics, the top 10 hashtag trends, and the top 10 "in memorium" trends, and the top 10 holiday trends.

Just barely squeaking it at number 15 on the Top Twitter Brands list was Waterloo's Research In Motion. The BlackBerry maker was the lone Canadian company on the list, but tech companies overall were popular: Google, Facebook, Apple, HP, NetFlix, PlayStation, and even MySpace made the list (is it sad that MySpace still manages to trump RIM by a wide margin?).

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Three Facebook Users Die Every Minute. How Will Your Online Legacy Look After Death?

Three Facebook users die every minute, leading to millions of worldwide accounts that have deceased owners. Will the account remain as it were, frozen in time? Is that how the person who passed would have preferred it? A new hot topic is posthumous "online reputation management," which looks at how friends and family can retain control of the online legacies of the dead.

“While many people prepare a will to manage what happens to their possessions after their death, most have likely not considered what happens to their digital information,” said Jeff Quipp, the founder of Canadian internet marketing company Search Engine People. “Photos from wild parties might not be the lasting impression a person may wish to leave when they die.” 

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Served With a Side of Racism: Twitter Firestorm Ignites After Papa Johns Calls Woman 'Lady Chinky Eyes'

Minhee Cho ordered Papa Johns yesterday evening. She wanted pizza… but she got blatant racism instead. This afternoon, Minhee tweeted to Papa Johns after noticing something a little off about her "name":

Hey  just FYI my name isn't "lady chinky eyes" 

Yep, you read that right. An employee at Papa Johns punched Minhee's name into the computer as "lady chinky eyes," a racial slur against Asians.

Almost immediately, a flurry of retweets spurred well over 30,000 views in just a couple of hours, spiralling the incident into a viral firestorm of consumer fury. The Huffington Post got ahold of the store manager, who half-heartedly apologized, saying that the employee probably "didn't mean any harm." The manager, identified only as Marjani, said that the employee would be disciplined but did not clarify what sort of disciplinary action would take place.

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The English-Speaking World is Getting Sadder

If Twitter can accurately represent the English-speaking world, then new research reveals that our overall happiness is on the decline. A team of scientists from the University of Vermont constructed a "happiness graph" based on a detailed and thorough study of tweets on the microblogging platform.

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Twitter Unveils Dramatic New Redesign [VIDEO]

Twitter has unveiled a redesign.

Just days after Google totally revamped YouTube, Twitter used that very medium to show off what the popular microblogging platform is apt to look like in the very near future. It's not a complete renovation, but considering how minimally Twitter ever changes (especially when compared to other social networks like, say, Facebook), this is a relatively dramatic move. Focused on an even simpler user experience, plus enhanced accessibility "for all 7 billion people on the planet," this redesign aims to maximize growth potential while re-engaging existing users.

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Watch World War II Unfold in Real-Time on Twitter

One of history's most eventful times is being reborn—or should we say retweeted—in real-time.

Twitter is home to RealTimeWWII, the genius product of Alwyn Collinson's creative mind. A fresh graduate of Oxford University (in Renaissance history), Alwyn concocted the idea of real-time tweeting the events of Adolf Hitler's devastating campaign for world domination.

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Social Media Tips For B2B Technology Marketers

B2B Social WorldThis morning, Environics Communications hosted a panel discussion at MaRS in Toronto entitled “The B2B Social World.” Digital B2B marketing experts from Backup Heros, Wave Accounting, Sequentia Environics, and MaRS sat on a panel to discuss the successes and failures that they’ve faced when using social media to promote their businesses.

The conversation started by identifying the best channels to use for B2B social media marketing. The panellists agreed that Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and online communities are some of the most effective tools for reaching potential customers and building relationships.

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