The Sunday Times Launches The Social List

At long last, social media users will no longer have to guess blindly who among them is the Number One social networker. UK-based newspaper the Sunday Times has unveiled The Social List, which determines a social networker's worth through an algorithm designed to calculate social media across four major sites: Twitter, Facebok, LinkedIn, and Foursquare.

In a press release, the Sunday Times described the The Social List as a definitive and ever evolving list of who's who in the world of social networking. The list works by adding up a person's social networking activity and measuring how much interest it generates amongs friends and colleagues.

The Social List was created in the tradition of The Rich list which the Sunday Times has been publishing every April since 1989 to rank the 1000 wealthiest people in the UK.

The Sunday Times has a strong tradition of publishing great guides and lists, said Gordon Thompson, Online Editor of The Sunday Times. The Social List is our latest innovation, a dynamic, interactive chart which shows you where you fit into the new world of social media. As social media continues to change the way people find information and interact online, so The Sunday Times Social List reflects the growing influence of bloggers and Tweeters on mainstream publishing and gives everyone the opportunity to pit themselves against their peers and climb the rankings of the most socially influential.

Free to join, participants will simply need to link up whichever social networks they use and want to be included. Every morning The Social List will make and publish its calculations. The results page will showcase the top 2000 most socially wealthy people at any given time.

To help people see where they are in the grand scheme of things, users are allocated a rank when they join and a badge that goes with it. This could change from 'Fledgling' through to the top spot, 'Titan', over time, depending on how well they are doing.