The Art of Retweet Birthday Party: Enlist the Help of Your Top Retweeters

It's my 53rd birthday on Monday and here's my birthday party plans.  I combining raising money to send Cambodian youngsters to school, an action learning experiment on the art of retweet, guest teaching at Stanford Business School class on social technology, and eating chocolate.  What could be more fun?

I've set a modest goal this year because small actions add up.  Thank you for donating!  I'm very honored that @hardlynormal, a homeless activist, has donated.  As well as friends and colleagues:

Anne Mai Bertelsen
Anne Quinn Ulseth
Wendy Harman
Amy Sample Ward
Michael Hoffman
Farra Trompeter
Stephanie McAuliffe
Sandy Lopacki
David Krumlauf
Spencer Brodsky
Sandra Sutton Andrews
Judith Sol-Dyess
Marianne Richmond
Mark Horvath
Catrina Joy Roallos
Korey Lee
Patti Anklam
Joyce Schneider
Samathida and Monothiya Kem
Norman Reiss
Jill Frank
Ray Nichols
Katya Andresen
Amy Jussel
Emma Latham
Bill Grey
Barbara Levy
Joe Baker
Shanon Des Roches
Dian Francesca
Jay Frost
Samantha Sakemiller
James Wu
Janet Fouts
Geoff Livingston
Jay Hall
David Neff
Sean Power
Adin Miller
Shara Karasic
Thomas Kelly
Ayelet Baron
Laura Clos
Danielle Brigida
JD Lasica
Carol Cone
Roger Carr
Tim Brauhn

   

Want to wish me a happy birthday?:

If you want to help send a Cambodian youngster to school in honor of my birthday ... $10 or more will do it.  And you can participate in my action learning experiment and spread happy birthday on Twitter with this tweet:

Happy birthday #beth53! Let's send 53 Cambodian kids to school: http://bit.ly/beth53

Insight: Art of Retweet

Eric Peterson who created a Twitter analytics tool called Twitalyzer sent me a birthday donation (a dollar for each year) and offered advice.  He suggested that I use Twitalyzer's Top 25 retweeters report shows the twenty-five people retweeting me ranked by impact as measured by Twitalyzer.  Impact, as defined by Twitalyzer, is a combination of the following factors:

    * The number of followers a user has
    * The number of unique references and citations of the user in Twitter
    * The frequency at which the user is uniquely retweeted
    * The frequency at which the user is uniquely retweeting other people
    * The relative frequency at which the user posts updates

Based on the analysis, he suggested that I focus on asking the people on the top of  list to retweet the message.  In looking at the list, it also makes sense to focus on those who have high engagement with their followers.

What have you learned about the art of retweet?