The Influence Index
If we lived in some kind of Orwellian dystopia, we could hook a nanobot to everybody's brain and scientifically measure just how much influence each human being has on every other. Whom do we trust? Whom do we fear? Whose ideas shape our view of the world — whether or not we even realize it?
Fortunately, that's pure science fiction. But it is becoming easier to quantify certain kinds of influence. Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, for instance, can provide some basic information about the breadth of a person's brand. The measures are far from perfect: they tend to reward the young rather than the old, artists and entertainers rather than scientists and thinkers. Lady Gaga has nearly as many Twitter followers as Barack Obama does; is she really just as influential? Probably not. But in other cases, the comparisons are more apples to apples. On our index, Sarah Palin's social-networking score is about 45 times that of Nancy Pelosi. Conan O'Brien may have lost the Tonight Show wars, but he emerged with almost 20 times as many Twitter followers as Jay Leno (who was one of the TIME 100 in 2009). Pelosi and Leno might hold the more prestigious positions, but there's little doubt about who has more ability to change the course of our conversations at a moment's notice — and in an interconnected world, that's what influence is all about.
Silver, a statistical analyst, runs FiveThirtyEight.com.
Barack Obama - 7,740,557
Lady Gaga - 6,697,752
Ashton Kutcher - 6,390,600
Taylor Swift - 5,608,398
Oprah Winfrey - 2,907,504
Robert Pattinson - 2,298,274
Ben Stiller - 1,735,285
Serena Williams - 1,681,207
Conan O'Brien - 1,352,195
Jet Li - 1,220,613
Damon Lindelof - 977,222
Carlton Cuse - 969,097
Sarah Palin - 884,145
Glenn Beck - 621,436
Neil Patrick Harris - 493,561
Sandra Bullock - 329,229
Marc Jacobs - 275,689
Banksy - 259,153
Sachin Tendulkar - 175,852
Simon Cowell - 171,726
Bill Clinton - 160,731
Lea Michele - 151,916
Scott Brown - 131,053
Didier Drogba - 97,611
Chetan Bhagat - 94,074
Mir-Hossein Mousavi - 77,455
James Cameron - 50,394
Kim Yu-Na - 49,493
Mike Krahulik - 41,305
Zaha Hadid - 33,242
Lee Kuan Yew - 27,859
Ricky Gervais - 27,422
Mike Mullen - 22,849
Zahra Rahnavard - 21,747
Elton John - 19,309
Nancy Pelosi - 19,123
Manmohan Singh - 17,977
Phil Mickelson - 14,922
Michael Pollan - 14,956
Sonia Sotomayor - 13,399
Jenny Beth Martin - 13,266
Annise Parker - 13,093
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva - 12,371
Steve Jobs - 10,662
Temple Grandin - 8,898
Tim Westergren - 8,152
Christine Lagarde - 7,913
Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan - 6,598
Suzanne Collins - 5,960
Recep Tayyip Erdogan - 5,925
Elizabeth Warren - 5,875
Kathryn Bigelow - 5,326
Lisa Jackson - 4,746
Stanley McChrystal - 2,886
Jon Kyl - 2,696
Amartya Sen - 2,621
Yukio Hatoyama - 2,228
Malalai Joya - 1,874
Tidjane Thiam - 1,675
Jerry Holkins - 1,483
Valery Gergiev - 1,307
Graca Machel - 1,234
Atul Gawande - 1,190
Neill Blomkamp - 1,113
Deborah Gist - 1,022
Jaime Lerner - 905
Elon Musk - 780
Salam Fayyad - 574
Paul Volcker - 465
Dominique Strauss-Kahn - 431
Kathleen Merrigan - 356
Tristan Lecomte - 249
Matt Berg - 198
David Boies - 151
Nay Phone Latt - 122
Victor Pinchuk - 114
Theodore Olson - 40
Liya Kebede - 12
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw - 3
Amy Smith - 0
Bo Xilai - 0
Chen Shu-chu - 0
David Chang - 0
Douglas Schwartzentruber - 0
P. Namperumalsamy - 0
Valentin Abe - 0
Edna Foa - 0
Han Han - 0
J.T. Wang - 0
Jaron Lanier - 0
Karls Paul-Noel - 0
Larry Kwak - 0
Mark Carney - 0
Michael Sherraden - 0
Prince - 0
Rahul Singh - 0
Reem Al Numery - 0
Robin Li - 0
Ron Bloom - 0
Sanjit "Bunker" Roy - 0
Tony Travis - 0
Sister Carol Keehan - 0
Tim White - 0
Will Allen - 0
*Formula for networking index = (Twitter followers) x 2 + (Facebook connections) divided by 2
The average honoree has about twice the number of Facebook connections as Twitter followers; to adjust for that, the Twitter number was doubled, then the average taken of the two. For honorees who use only one social site, the number for that site alone was used.