10 Twitter users every Philadelphian should follow

Some people count how many friends they have, and some people count the value of their friendships. On social media — and the web generally — we have the same kind of experience.

We can count just about everything online, and so it should surprise no one that as social media has boomed, so too have the comparisons between Facebook friend counts and Twitter followers.

But there’s so often a nuance that raw numbers can’t show.

It’s easy enough to track who are the most followed Twitter users in Philadelphia, but everyone is trying to figure out how those figures measure in influence — or ‘resonance.’ Suppose we want to see who are the biggest Philadelphia voices in the Twitter conversation — not spam accounts with big follower numbers, but those people who you should be following, whose opinions matter and are being heard.

Simply, what Philadelphia Twitter users matter most?

Find the rest on the Philly Post of Philadelphia magazine.

10 most trafficked Web sites in Philadelphia (maybe)

Traffic estimates from Compete.com for Philly.com, NBCPhiladelphia.com and CBS3.com, likely three of the most trafficked websites in Philadelphia. Click to enlarge.

July marks the middle of the calendar year, quarterly reports and time to evaluate progress on yearly goals.

At the beginning of 2010, we looked at 10 competitors and their relative web traffic. With six months done, we wanted to make the first attempt at listing the most trafficked websites in Philadelphia, using monthly unique visitors as the metric of choice.

To make the comparison, we’ve used public traffic website Compete, but, by way of disclosure, we’ll always offer that any public web metrics are notoriously controversial. It’s also important to note that there is often a drag in such traffic estimates being pulled, so the surest figures are from the end of May.

So, consider this a comparative start and nothing more.

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Five city departments and agencies that could use a Web overhaul

In an informal partnership with Philadelphia magazine‘s new Philly Post daily news blog, Technically Philly will be offering our insight on Philadelphia technology to a broader audience of tech-interested individuals every Tuesday. As is true of so much of our effort, this is yet another opportunity to voice the triumphs and concerns of the community to a broader audience in the city and beyond.

The use of technology to transform government has been a growing municipal interest in city halls across the country.

Here, the City of Philadelphia has announced intentions to release a service-orientated 311 iPhone application, it’s applying for ultra high-speed broadband from Google and it’s in hot pursuit of a funded team of developers and technologists which may someday make our every government transparency dreams come true.

Read more at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.

Ten most followed Philadelphia Twitter users

Roots drummer Questlove is Philadelphia's most followed Twitter user as of March 2010. Graph courtesy of TwitterCounter.com.

It’s tough to say just what it all means, but there’s some fascination with Twitter follower counts.

It’s a metric of some kind. Not quite popularity or power or purpose. Influence, yes, though many a spam account accrues tens of thousands of followers. So, take that as our warning. Twitter follower counts don’t necessarily mean jack, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

So we took a quick spin to meet who was out there representing Philadelphia in Twitter conversations. Who are the 10 most followed Twitter users listing Philadelphia as their home?

Below, you find out.

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Wharton MBA program ranked third best in world

The Wharton Business School MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania has been ranked the third best in the world by the Business Insider.

“Wharton is known for delivering talent who provide a strong strategic thinking perspective combined with exemplifying executive communication skills,” a General Electric recruiter told the New York City-based business and technology news blog.

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How to open a business in the City of Philadelphia, or 15 reasons people move to the suburbs

So you want to open a business in Philadelphia?

A Technically Philly reader recently launched her first venture in the city’s limits and thought the process was agonizing enough and the help non-existent enough to share.

She’s fairly straight-laced, she tells us, so she wanted to open her operation as legitimately and legally as possible. Yes, a good tax-paying business opening up shop in Philadelphia, so I’m sure we all expect the red-carpet treatment from the city.

Except, of course, as you know, the process was laborious and involved so many wrong turns, that we decided to give you all a short hand.

Below, in addition to the 15 steps and more than two months this passionate entrepreneur took to give money to the city, we show you the right way to launch your business in Philadelphia in five (oh my God, we know it won’t actually be easy) steps.

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Friday Tech Links: Fourth most innovative, BigBelly trash video and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

DEFINITE READS

• Innovation Philadelphia reports that our fair city was ranked the fourth most innovative U.S. city in a recent large survey by 2think2know. Philly lagged behind Boston, which was ranked No. 1 globally, San Francisco, New York and Washington D.C. We were 32nd globally.
• Good magazine hits Center City to talk the innovation surrounding the recently installed BigBelly trash cans that are showing up on our busy city streets. There’s a hotly edited video that includes Oscar the Grouch.

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Best of Philly nods to our community from Philadelphia magazine

The August issue of Philadelphia magazine has its annual and ever-popular Best of Philly awards, edited this year by Michael Callahan. It will come as no surprise that lot’s of familiar faces pop up, including a number from our creative communities of technology and innovation.

Below, we breeze through the names you just might stumble upon at the next community event.

• In the “ENJOY” section, the all-comedy acting company 1812 Productions gets the nod as the city’s best Theatre group. We’ve covered their work for an iPhone app about Abraham Lincoln to promote the Rosenblach Museum.

See seven others from the magazine’s nearly 300 listings after the jump.

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Technically Not Tech: The Travelocity Traveling Gnome

Courtesy of the gnome's Facebook page

For a city that is used to being voted to the wrong end of top ten lists, Philly is making a comeback. Ugliest? Fattest? Psh.

This is the birthplace of American democracy, and we are finally starting to show it. Earlier this month, Philadelphians rose up en masse and voted Phillies CF Shane Victornio to the final roster spot in the MLB All Star game, beating out players from San Fran, Washington and Los Angeles.

In our latest victory, thanks to the urging of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation, Philly won the right to host Travolcity‘s traveling gnome for a week over Boston and D.C.
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Ten Philadelphia tech organizations that should have Wikipedia entries but don’t

Look, this is down right embarrassing.

Earlier this month we retweeted Viddler founder Rob Sandie. He was self-promoting, but damn it if we didn’t agree with him. Why didn’t the growing video-hosting service have a Wikipedia entry? Now that Google News has begun to link to the Web’s largest community-edited encyclopedia, it’s clear it’s bypassed mainstream and shot straight to influential.

So, it’s become something of shorthand for the importance of a subject, person or organization. But, as we found, Philadelphia generally and its technology and innovation communities specifically are dismally represented in the Web 2.0 powerhouse.

When someone answered Sandie’s call to create a Viddler Wikipedia page, it was deleted because, as one Wiki editor wrote, the article was “about a web site, blog, online forum, webcomic, podcast, or similar web content that didn’t assert the importance or significance of its subject.”

Sounds like a call to make clear the Philadelphia technology scene is significant. Below, we share our list of 10 members of our community that don’t have Wikipedia entries, but should, including Viddler.

We respect the mission of Wikipedia, so don’t consider this spam posting. Rather, we think our community is very underserved by the online encyclopedia. This, my friends, is basic stuff we need to get down. Who’s stepping up?

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