• 5.646
  million the number of followers Spears has; she’s at the top of the heap but won’t be for much longer
• 5.635
  million the number Lady Gaga has; Justin Bieber could top her within six months, though source

• More active users are more influential, according to HP Labs. The company’s Social Computing Lab did research into whether or not users with a high number of followers are really the site’s most influential. And the answer? No. “To become influential, users must not only catch the attention of their followers; they must also overcome their followers’ predisposition to remain passive,” the report notes. So in other words, annoy the crap out of your followers! source

• 101,377 number of followers @ConanOBrien has – in just THREE HOURS; way to rally the troops, dude
• 30,061 number of followers @JayLeno has, which has been running since May and isn’t written by him

The pitch-perfect intro

• Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.
• Conan O’Brien • In his heavily-retweeted “Hello, World” to the Web. There was some question as to whether the account was initially real, but it now has a spankin’ “Verified Account” stamp on it. We wonder if this Twitter account is the suggestion of bigger things. You know, like a tour. source

• He had said, ‘I don’t know if I’m sad or relieved that this is not a fake account’ because there are so many joke accounts for celebrities. That’s when the inspiration struck.
• @FakeAPStylebook cofounder Ken Lowery • On the spark he and cohort Mark Hale had in creating the hilarious Twitter account. Essentially, the duo had seen @APStylebook, the Associated Press’ official Twitter feed for all things random style, and saw an idea ripe for parody. The realization paid big dividends – Lowery and Hale have 20,000 more followers than their source of inspiration and already have a book deal lined up. Does the real AP like it? Well, some reporters do, but they haven’t heard from the AP proper yet.  • source

• Best Buy is raising a lot of eyebrows (and getting a lot of retweets) with its latest job posting. Among other things, one of their “preferred qualifications” listed for a media marketing position is to have a minimum of 250 followers on Twitter. Wait a second…we can totally apply! Employee discount here we come! source

• $87 to buy 1,000 cut-rate Twitter followers from uSocial source

• Breaking 900k feels like a marathon runner entering Olympic stadium. However my @replys are becoming difficult to track.
• Ashton Kutcher • On breaking 900,000 freaking followers. He challenged CNN to a ego-waving contest to see who can get to a million followers first. We hope neither of them win. • source

• Twitter is actually great. Don’t listen to the haters who claim that all people ever do with Twitter is tweet about how they’re going to use the bathroom. It’s a great, versatile communication tool, and has largely taken the place of the chat rooms of Internet past. (Sorry, mIRC. We were good friends back in the day.) We’ve even made some good friends through Twitter. But we do have one problem with the site: Its overuse as a social marketing tool.
• Social marketers must die. We agree, Twitter’s a great promotional tool. We use it ourselves to tell people about our latest updates. And it tells people when we’ve last trashed on U2. And we even chat with them! But then there’s users like @MikeKlingler and @DiyanaAlcheva. Both of whom have over 15,000 followers. Both of whom followed us today. Both of whom we’ll never actually communicate with. For the love of God, stop ruining a good thing!