98FM recently launched its Twitter-O-Meter, a fun tool to see what DJs are generating the most traffic on the social media site. With this in mind we have put together a list of Ireland’s top ten media tweeters (which is dominated by radio presenters) ranked in order of followers – as well as a list of those we’d like to see join the party.
1. David McWilliams @davidmcw 56,521 Followers
The celebrity economist has the largest following of Ireland’s media darlings. Those of you shouting for Dara O’Briain (800k odd followers), sorry, I’ve discounted him as he’s a British media star, although native of Ireland. Not a prolific contributor with just 2,122 tweets to his name, McWilliams is usually tweeting about the state of the nation or pointing us towards interesting articles on the latest EU crisis.
2. Vincent Browne @vincentbrowne 52,777 Followers
Although officially second in our list it is clear that the political journalist and TV presenter does not operate the account himself. In fact we’re not really sure he knows what Twitter is and regularly refers to it as ‘the twitter box’ on his nightly show. Pretty much all his entries are just links to politico.ie which is why we have also included the sharp tongued broadcaster in our ‘wish you were tweeting’ list.
3. George Hook @ghook 45,407 Followers
Proving that social media isn’t just for kids, Ireland’s grumpiest rugby pundit and radio broadcaster has an impressive following. Generally tweeting about what’s coming up on his Newstalk show he also throws in some personal tit bits like this one: ‘One of the great advantages of broadcasting from Cork, is being alone at night in the bedroom and being a fat old man in peace’.
4. Miriam O’Callaghan @miriamocal 40,333 Followers
RTÉ’s top tweeter is quite an active user with 8,764 tweets to date. Rather than using her feed purely to promote the latest Prime Time programme, she is quite happy to engage in conversation with her followers and often retweets messages for good causes.
5. Matt Cooper @cooper_m 38,888 Followers
George’s drive time rival presenter at sister station Today FM is the second most followed radio presenter. Generally commenting on political issues and sporting events he also likes to engage with Ireland’s other Twitter heavyweights such as funnyman and TV writer @colmtobin.
6. Mark Little @marklittlenews 33,897 Followers
The former RTÉ presenter is a social media expert having founded Storyful – the news site made up of content from professional writers, social media posts and citizen journalists. He is the most prolific tweeter on our list with 17,084 entries to date. Generally tweeting about Storyful stories from around the globe, he is also known for posting pictures of Dublin’s docklands on his way in and out of work.
7. Ray Foley @rayfoleyshow 33,720
A Twitter account mainly promoting material from the lunchtime Today FM show. The huge following isn’t surprising given the popularity of the young DJ over the last few years.
8. Hector O’hEochagain @hectoron2fm 27,482 Followers
The Navan man tweets about anything from horse racing to his beloved Manchester United and likes to engage his radio listeners on Twitter. Hector uses his multilingual skills with the odd tweet as Gaeilge or en Espanyol.
9. Sean Moncrieff @seanmoncrieff 27,080 Followers
The Newstalk presenter’s Twitter bio currently says: ‘I’m a handy kitchen utensil’, which is as unusual a statement as some of the quirky topics covered in his popular afternoon show such as recent coverage of Julian Clary’s chickens. He likes to interact with listeners/followers using hash tag games. This week he had #fishmovies with my personal favourite entry being ‘Butch Bassidy and the Sun fish kid’.
10. Ian Dempsey @iandempsey 26,069 Followers
Yet another Communicorp radio presenter at number 10. Could there be a company policy to push Twitter? Dempsey mostly uses his account as a post board for listeners by retweeting their comments. Ran a # competition recently looking for historic tweets before Twitter was invented and came up with some gems like, ‘Looking forward to Saipan. Facilities seem ok. Roy is a bit quiet but what could possibly go wrong? @mickmccarthy #beforetwitter’.
Who we’d like to see on Twitter
The banter would be top class if we could get the senior RTÉ soccer panel onto social media. Granted Gilesy might struggle with the technology but surely Bill, Eamon and Liam could help him out? We’d love to see the real Vincent Browne up there too and not the TV3 intern who, we assume, runs his account. Columnist Kevin Myers’ barbs could also adapt well to the 140 character format. Why not tell us who you’d like to see on Twitter in the comments below?
