When pondering who the most influential people in the world are today, one would usually hesitate a guess at a political figure, like Barack Obama, or a business mogul like Warren Buffet or a technology magnate like Bill Gates.
But on Twitter, it is a very different collective topping the list of those who have a distinct tone of authority over their followers.
Boy band One Direction have been named the most influential people on Twitter by PeerIndex, a chart that takes more than just the number of followers into consideration when assigning its ranks.
The five members of 1D take the top five places of the chart, with Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne scoring 98 out of 100 for their Twitter influence while fifth member Zayn Malik scores 97.
While more than just their number of followers is taken into consideration, Zayn has the least followers of the 1D boys, with around 7 million less followers than bandmate Harry who has over 17 million fans on Twitter.
The chart was composed by analysing more than 10 billion tweets from 150 million people, focusing on UK Twitter users and the influence they have on other Brits.
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Also making it into the top 10 was signer Ed Sheeran, Prime Minister David Cameron, journalists Piers Morgan and Caitlin Moran and comedian Ricky Gervais.
"As Twitter has become more mainstream, the top 140 starts to resemble the contours of popular culture and power, the footballers, politicians and boy bands," said PeerIndex founder Azeem Azhar.
"However, social media’s democratising effects still allow those with challenging, well-defined or interesting views to build influence. Witness the number of independent media stars, like Marius Listhrop and Dan Howell and authors like Owen Jones and Caitlin Moran."
PeerIndex is keen to point out that Twitter users can be influential without millions of followers, while also suggesting that the social network has fragmented into "subcultures" that exist almost entirely separately.
"Twitter is so rich and vast, that subcultures co-exist on it, often without knowing about each other," said Azhar. "For example, even though more than 900, 000 people follow both George Osborne, the chancellor, and Rylan, the reality TV celebrity, they only share six followers in common."
Stephen Fry, who has over 6 million followers and is generally regarded as a prominent Tweeter has dropped out of the top 10 and is now placed at number 11, with Simon Cowell, journalist Owen Jones and Lord Alan Sugar also placing just outside the top 10.
– Name ——— score – followers –
1. Liam Payne – 98 – 12.3m
2. Harry Styles – 98 – 15.4m
3. Niall Horan – 98- 13.4m
4. Louis Tomlinson – 98 – 12.2m
5. Zayn Malik – 97 – 9.9m
6. Ed Sheeran – 97 – 7.4m
7. David Cameron – 97 – 0.4m
8. Piers Morgan – 97 – 3.6m
9. Caitlin Moran – 96 – 0.4m
10. Ricky Gervais – 96 – 5.9m
