The Most Powerful Gays: As Ranked By Twitter Followers

Laurence Watts, a freelance journalist, and founder of the advocacy group Servicemembers United’s Campaign for Military Partners, published a list at The Huffington Post  that he called “The Most Powerful LGBT People on Twitter.”

Fortunately there is way we can compile a list of influential LGBT people that transcends national boundaries: we can use Twitter. Unlike a panel of judges, it’s democratic and allows easy comparison between individuals. While not a measure of wealth, it’s certainly a measure of voice, and while certain LGBT celebrities don’t have Twitter accounts, it could be argued they are less influential because of it.

Here then is a list I’ve compiled of whom I believe to be the world’s 30 most powerful LGBT people, ranked by their number of Twitter followers at the time of writing.

Laurence left some people off of his list, so I added to his list and then re-sorted the spread sheet. Some of the obvious omissions (obvious to me) included Kara Swisher, Ross Matthews. Christian Siriano, Billie Joe Armstrong, and Louie Spence. I also added some of our straight allies that are honorary gays(from Eddie Izzard to Joan Rivers and Kylie Minogue etc). This list is totally subjective, and the additions I made to Laurence’s list were my opinion, and I scrambled to find one more person to make it a list of 50 - but failed to think of one more.

If you can think of a glaring omission of someone I left out, who has a twitter account and a huge following, please let me know in the comments!

If you have a blog and want to use the graphics, feel free. Just give proper credit s.v.p.

Here is Laurence’s original List.

Laurence’s List 

Roy's List

This is my list, with my subjective additions and the total number of followers as of November 6, 2011.

1. Lady GaGa United States 15,478,402
2. Ellen DeGeneres United States 8,090,539 
3. Ricky Martin United States 4,321,521 
4. Chelsea Handler United States 4,153,498 
5. Perez Hilton United States 4,069,951 
6. Stephen Fry United Kingdom 3,346,205
7. Lindsay Lohan United States 2,643,426
8. Kevin Spacey United States 2,158,774
9. Eddie Izzard United Kingdom 2,107,340
10. Neil Patrick Harris United States 2,047,774
11. Rachel Maddow United States 1,963,033
12. Anderson Cooper United States 1,758,672 
13. Alan Carr United Kingdom 1,422,914
14. Jessie J. United Kingdom 1,389,703
15. Gavin Newsom United States 1,297,438 
16. Adam Lambert United States 1,241,768
17. Suze Orman United States 1,214,313
18. Kathy Griffin United States 1,151,815
19. Chris Colfer United States1,098,398
20. Derren Brown United Kingdom 922,614 
21. Kylie Minogue United Kingdom 882,357 
22. Karl Lagerfeld France 788,238
23. Kara Swisher United States 787,963
24. Joan Rivers United States 691,455 
25. Gok Wan United Kingdom 543,406
26. Andy Cohen United States 526,491 
27. Scott Mills United Kingdom 512,116 
28. Matt Lucas United Kingdom 459,126
29. Louie Spence United Kingdom 455,870
30. Kristin Chenoweth United States 436,416
31. Cher United States 413,738
32. Jane Lynch United States 400,331
33. Zachary Quinto United States 389,313
34. Michael Kors United States 364,236
35. Ross Matthews United States 287,571
36. Rosie O’Donnell United States 281,277
37. George Michael United Kingdom 273,326
38. Christian Siriano United States 261,320
39. Joe McElderry United Kingdom 258,850
40. George Takei United States 234,581
41. Billie Joe Armstrong United States 197,151
42. Antony Cotton United Kingdom 159,859
43. Boy George United Kingdom 152,855 
44. Margaret Cho United States 150,183
45. Christian Louboutin France 147,848
46. Donna Brazile United States 144,191
47. Lance Bass United States 137,195
48. Nate Berkus United States 124,499
49. Don Lemon United States 117,267

What do you think?

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