On Twitter, the race for followers is evident from the multitude of spammers advertising “fast free followers,” and a myriad of applications and websites that promise to increase follower counts. Many people equate follower counts to circulation, but it’s a suspect comparison. Just how valuable are followers, anyway?

The most followed accounts are generally those of media outlets and especially celebrities. In perhaps the most unsurprising study yet released, Sysomos has done a study of followers’ influence based on retweets and follower quality, and found that celebrities’ followers have the least influence.

Because celebrities’ followers are inherently listeners, rather than authorities or influencers, they do not have the same value as followers of the New York Times or other media outlets. Sysomos identified rankings of “follower authority,” defined as those who are more apt to comment or make their own judgments on current events and share those opinions, via retweet or reblogging.

The quest for followers does have some use in validating the newsworthiness of the information from a particular twitter account, but chasing follower numbers alone is a poor metric of performance when using social media. Pay attention to the quality of followers you attract as well as the number to spread your message online.

Find more information on this study at Mashable.

Originally posted at Speaking of Social Media.