I wanted to take a slightly different angle and ask this question:

Who was the most influential person you met through Twitter in 2008?

I don’t mean who has the most followers or RSS subscribers I don’t mean who has the biggest income etc etc…

Who’s value to you on Twitter, Who’s advice be it personal or business has had the most impact on your life in 2008!?

For me I had a turning point about 2 weeks ago, Twitter for me was a fun side sport as was my blog but upon reading Guy Kawasaki’s Twitter as a Twool and also reading points of the webinar (via hashtags as I couldnt get up and running) from Chris Brogan and Duct Tape Marketing I decided to try and take my side passion and see if 2009 could really be about some business.

I for one value amazingly highly the connections and friends I have made in this past three months on Twitter.

Darren Rowse recently had an article on Twitip 10 Twitter Agendas – What’s Yours?, where I arrogantly declared myself as a Combo Meal…

Are we all thing’s to all Men and Women? Do the people (pals) who listen to our updates have the same impression of there usefullness as we think we give?

Twitter was and still is a personal communication tool for many but it’s plainly obvious that it has now been embraced as a Marketing tool, some people use it in a Caped Crusader-esq manner and some turn it into the Joker but it is a Business Tool and those who deny or condemn its use in this fashion are not seeing the wood for the trees.

I still like to think I’m a Combo Meal but this post was not to discuss the merits of our percieved value to our twitter pals this was to define ONE thing.

Who was the most influential person you met through Twitter in 2008?Please make a nomination in the comments I’m not going to turn this into a poll as polls are messy and ambiguous, just state who (The One) and Why?

As an avid Twitter user I searched for some interesting people to follow and listen to concerning these subjects, what I found that many people have keywords in their @username but never tweet a single thing about SEO or Social Media so I thought I would make a list of the people I found that are sharing tips either directly from Twitter or via posts that they tweet to Twitter.

In no particular order;

@jdevalk

Owner of Yoast, making WordPress all Google friendly with some nice free plugins, has a tendency to waffle about his train rides and such but some gems in between ;)

@JustinSMV

New to Twitter but shares some nice link’s to Social Media posts.

@garryconn

Full time blogger who shares alot of good stuff, you might get upset with the fact that he tweets links to his blog comments via Twitter but some of them are pretty interesting.

@chrisbrogan

Alot of interesting posts via his blog and does his best to try and interact with his 20K followers. Read his post ‘How I Use Twitter at Volume’.

@leeodden

One of most pleasant finds while searching for new ‘input’, his blog Top Rank Blog puts out some great stuff, last week I said ‘if you can get through all the PubCon posts but actually this last week those have been some of the most interesting.

@problogger

Darren has recently started a useful resource in the form of TwiTip, where you’ll find gems like ’10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners’, the worst thing for Darren (or us) is the timezones when he’s getting up others are going to sleep!

@mikerbrt

Reads and shares some great stuff, Thankfully stopped using #Magpie!

@netgeek06

Author of another Twitter list that hit big time on DIGG, some good SEO and Social Media links shared.

@steverubel

Some good SEO and Social media links.

@aaronwall

SEO Tweeter extraordinaire and author of SEOBook.

@johnhaydon

Sharer of good things and the ONLY person I ever saw that instead of an auto follow script Thanking you or telling you about the latest ebook someone has to offer he actually setup an auto follow to suggest other interesting Tweeters to follow! Great stuff John!

@WebOptimization

He claims to tweet about SEO but most seem to be Twitter and Social Media related, he does tweet sometimes in Romanian but because of the interesting stuff he shares we can forgive him that! ;)

@farffa

Mostly links to SEO, ‘How to get Back links’, ‘Will moving my domain help my SEO’etc, good posts!

@websuccessdiva

A self proclaimed ‘Social Media Diva’sharing and interacting as and when.

This list is getting a bit too long for one post and I can feel peoples concentration starting to wane! Part 2 coming soon!

If you have any suggestions on interesting people to follow in the SEO, Social Media world then drop a comment and I’ll include them in the next Part, but call me selfish their are lots of self proclaimed people in these areas but I’m am looking for people who bring value to their followers by tweeting tips and links!