This week, Melbourne is attending and sponsoring SASCon, Manchester’s premier search, analytics and social media conference.
In view of the goings-on at MMU, we couldn’t resist running a SAScon Awards competition. We’ve tracked down the Twitter account of every delegate who has one and had a snoop at some of their key stats with a little help from the wonderful Topsy.
Look at the list of attendees and you’ll see why it might be difficult for the digital marketing industry to get much work done over the two days.
The “Social Media Guru” Award
Oh, come on. The person with the biggest Twitter following wins here. Who wouldn’t want to have a tens of thousands of people hanging on your every word? These are the people in the tech, search, analytics and social world who command respect because they have backstage passes to the inner sanctum of digital mission control.
But who is the gurus’ guru? We’ve got the top candidates together to duke it out for the top spot. If you’re at SAScon, remember to bow when you pass any of them; but only genuflection will suffice for the top guy, the Jabba the Hutt of SAScon.
Nominations
But which one has the most followers?
And the winner…
With 38626 followers (and probably more by the time you read this), Pubcon founder Brett “@btabke” Tabke is the guy in the room with the most followers.The average (mean) amount of Twitter followers each SAScon attendee has is 1559, although the median is about 520. Amongst active Twitter users as a whole, the average is supposed to be around 120-200. Well done, all of you!
The “Cutts Above” Awards
Matt Cutts is a legendary figure to all webmasters. Some name their children after him. Some name their punch bags after him. For our second award we honour the SAScon 2014 attendees who have sent the most Tweets to Matt Cutts as of 4th June 2014. And equally the SEO who received the most replies from the man from Mountain View.
Nominations – Tweets To
In total 61 people attending SAScon have sent at least 1 tweet to Matt Cutts. The above are the top 10.
And the winner…
Dave Naylor and Matt Cutts share a special relationship with an incredible 158 Tweets (183 including RTs) sent from the Bronco honcho to Matt.
https://twitter.com/DaveNaylor/status/911148496
An impressive 938 were sent to Matt Cutts from people at SAScon. That’s an average of 4.1 tweets each. But what about replies?
Nominations – Replies
In total, twenty nine people at SAScon have received tweets from Matt. The above attendees are the top 10. But who received the most?
And the winner is…
Once again Dave Naylor takes the crown… receiving 48 tweets back from Google’s head of webspam. You might say that the relationship between those two… Cutts both ways.
https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/18374777828
Oh you!
The “Early Adopter” Award
Some people follow trends. Some people set trends. We believe that every attendee of SAScon is a trend setter… but who is the earliest of early adopters?
Twitter launched on March 21st 2006… but which of the SAScon attendees was first in line to share their opinions with the rest of the world.
Nominations
And the winner is…

Joining Twitter on 7th March 2007,
@PaulReilly (aka user 817,615) is the hippest of Twitter hipsters at SAScon. Frankly we prefer
his second tweet to his first. Followers of fashion should keep a keen eye on this character. If Paul says that the next trend is tying an onion to your belt, you’d be wise to start stocking up.
The “Share Bear” Award
We’re sure that everyone at SAScon regularly creates content that people will want to naturally link to or share via social media. But some people out there are THE literal Scrooge McDucks of Twitter and refuse to share.
Do they think they are too cool for school? We think so. Forget about them. This award recognises those who have been good guys and gals by retweeting others.
Nominations
The top 10 SAScon 2014 attendees who have retweeted others the most.
And the winner is…
SAScon’s biggest share-bear is @technicalfault aka Josh from a company we’ve literally never heard of ;-). Josh has retweeted an eye watering 30886 times since joining Twitter. We salute you Josh.
The “Keyboard Destroyer” Award
The relationship between a Twitter user and their followers is a special one. By tweeting that you’re drinking a cup of coffee, that it’s raining or other trivial details, you’re “reinforcing your personal brand identity and informing others” as only marketers and PRs can.
This award is for the SAScon attendees that tweeted the most in the past year (excluding retweets).
Nominations
And the winner is…
We suspect foul play so have decided to award SAScon 2014’s “Most Prolific Tweeter” award to @MartinSFP with 9816 tweets in the last 365 days. We’re not maths scientists but we suspect that that means he’s tweeted at least twice since you started reading this. How many keyboards do you go through in a year, Martin?
The “Sweary Mary” Award (SAScon edition)
Having a Twitter analysis API is much like owning a dictionary. You want to look up the rude words first. Here at Melbourne, we answer the questions no-one else will. Whether it’s our award winning support or the answer to the question… “Who swears the most?”
For our last award, we looked at which SAScon attendee had dropped the F-bomb the most on Twitter in the last 365 days. Also the s-bomb, c-bomb, b-bomb and a few others we had to look up.
Nominations
And the winner is…
https://twitter.com/_eltee/status/383945762557931520
Laura Thomas aka @_eltee will in no way be surprised to win this award. She describes herself as a “female Malcolm Tucker” and has cursed at least once in an impressive 234 tweets in the last 12 months. We think it’s unfair to demonise her for coarse language because it takes two to tango. If referee Mike Dean had done a decent job and not sent Torres off…
More Awards?
If you’ve ever been curious about who links the most to Moz.com (“The Wizard Of Moz Award?”) or who says “LOL” the most… tweet your suggestion for awards to @MelbourneHost and we’ll pick some of the best.
P.S. If you want to know where you ranked for any award, just ask :-).
See What The Attendees Are Saying
Tweets from https://twitter.com/MelbourneHost/lists/sascon-2014-attendees