Twitterholic has been a fun tool to see who the top 100 Twitterers are on the Twitter system. The problem has been that there isn't much else functionality to go along with it. Also there have been reports of it not being accurate. So... we decided to have a closer look at TwitDir and compare it to Twitterholic.

TwitDir is short for Twitter 'Directory'. It accesses the twitter API to enable you to search for twitter users and then get their stats. Cool. It also has a series of 'top 20' lists. Top 20 followed, top 20 updaters, top 20 favouriters and top 20 followers are all on the menu. These are all great but we wish they offered an option to choose top 50 or top 100.

We compared them directly and below are screenshots of the top ten from both Twitterholic and TwitDir. As you will see there are some discrepencies. It seems that TwitDir is the most current. It also seems that there are some missing people in the Twitterholic list. We have come across this before actually where a user of thousands of followers didn't even show up on twitterholic. For example, barackobama is #6 with 3000+ followers on TwitDir but that ID is not even listed in Twitterholic, not even in the top 100.  Huh?  Strange isn't it?  We also checked out our own twittown twitter ID on TwitDir. It was right up to date with our profile on Twitter! But on Twitterholic, we don't show up on the top 100, even though we have enough followers to make the list. Hmm, something fishy?  Maybe something broken with Twitterholic?

It looks like Twitterholic either needs to work on their process of making the list or polling the system. Maybe it needs to update the frequency it collects data and lastly, it sure would be nice if it had more features.

So for now, it looks like TwitDir is the winner for us for most things. It is right up to date, get top 20 lists and find info about any user. 

If you want or need that top 100 list of twitterers.. you are currently stuck with the outdated and potentially inaccurate Twitterholic.

If anyone has any further insight, please post in the comments!

Screenshots

Search for twittown user on TwitDir

Twitdir top 10 (of 20)

Twitterholic top 10 (of 20)