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The general media buzz (and most of the vox pops it has to be said) is that the LibDems are a washed up force. That’s far from certain.

If there is a lesson from the Blair years in terms of media manipulation, it’s surely that there was too short term a focus on tomorrow’s media headlines. If Clegg and his team are worried by the outlook today, they should remain firmly fixed on the long term horizon.

4th March 2011 newspaper stories will mean nothing come May 2015. The LibDem test will be on whether the deficit has been filled in (at least in part) alongside a return to reasonable economic growth. Add in some very liberal social policies and some political/constitutional reforms and the exaggerated claims of the party’s death will be in the newspaper archives.

It won’t be quite that simple of course. As developments in North Africa/Middle East underline, it’s events “dear boy” that do for most politicians. Just ask the former French Foreign Minister. Clegg and co will be less tested on tuition fees and budget deficits than they will be on how they respond to crisis and unforeseen events.

For anxious Lib Dems today, keep your eyes on the long term prize (oh and improve the media performances of your Cabinet Ministers…Clegg, Cable & Alexander are not doing themselves or you any great favours on the TV and radio right now).

The debate about the concentration of media with the Murdochs will roll on. Rightly so. Beyond the really big questions around media ownership, two questions will remain unanswered.

Without Murdoch’s massive investment in satellite TV in the late 80′s/early 90′s, would our multichannel, on demand world be in play today. Rolling news, Sky+, Premiership football anyone?

With a little more circumspection, Dr Cable would have been the one making today’s decision. Would it have been the same outcome?

We’re fascinated about influence and engagement through any form of communication. What’s really interesting, though, is not popularity as measured simply by number of followers, but the level of trust placed in a tweet and the tweeter. TweetLevel at least attempts to discover this to some degree with Trust one of its four metrics. With more trust, the more potential to influence. What’s then really difficult to know is if that leads to any opinion/attitude change or specific actions.

Thankfully, for all the attempted analysis and genuine interest in understanding the power (as well as joy) that Twitter can facilitate, most observers have recognised this is principally just a bit of fun.

We’ll try to unpick a bit more next week. We’ve added a few more @usernames to our list and are currently researching a whole lot more – but we welcome @username suggestions, either your own or others.

One week on, we’ve run our 150+ @usernames through TweetLevel again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top ten (002 Top 10 League Table ) remains largely the same but for a brand new entry into the league, @pigsonthewing, who makes it straight in at 6. Otherwise, just a few movements within the ten, notably @tom_watson taking top spot (he’s an honorary Brummie for the purposes this list!) and @daveharte dropping out to 11 (I know it will be a big blow, Dave!).

Outside the ten, Birmingham Post editor @marcreeves has climbed 39 places and is just three places from making the business end of the table. He’s only second in the Risers chart though – former West Midlands’ minister @LiamByrneMP climbs a whopping 82 places.

In other even less important news, we (@urbancomms) move up 30 places whilst our good friend @MattHeadline can only manage a climb of seven places. Better luck next time Matt – try shaving something else off or cracking more jokes.

Here’s the top ten in full:

1. @tom_watson
2. @paulbradshaw
3. @podnosh
4. @bounder
5. @peteashton
6. @pigsonthewing
7. @stef
8. @getgood
9. @edjames1
10. @siwhitehouse

No calculator associated with social media is perfect, but we think this version has a number of distinctive elements. TweetLevel looks at four metrics to each make up a score out of 100. It looks at Influence, Popularity, Engagement and Trust. More on the mechanics later.

Using this facility, we’ve built up a league table (Top 10 League Table 001) of Twitter users from in and around Birmingham. We plugged in (last Thursday) a total of 161 Twitter @usernames we follow or which we know. They include prominent creative and digital folk; media titles and journalists, PR and marketing types, politicians, civic and cultural entities. It’s by no means exhaustive or definitive, but it’s a start.

So here’s the inaugural top ten Birmingham’s Biggest Tweeters:

1. @podnosh
2. @tom_watson
3. @bounder
4. @paulbradshaw
5. @stef
6. @peteashton
7. @siwhitehouse
8. @getgood
9. @daveharte
10. @edjames1

Before you ask, @urbancomms is 70^th. So, much more work to do for us. We have a few PR people and firms ahead of us, but at least we’re above our old friend @MattHeadline (albeit by 1 place)!  No sign in the list of John Lamb.

We’re going to keep running the league table, including adding more and more names, on a weekly basis. In the meantime, further posts in this series will look into the detail of how TweetLevel works. We’ve also done some break downs of the league table by sector and by each of the four metrics, so again we will feature these in forthcoming posts.

There is some science in it and we have a healthy starting list of Birmingham’s – some would call – twiteratti. In the end the table is just a bit of fun. But, we hope it encourages more people to use Twitter and use it effectively to inform, engage and influence. If you want to make sure your @username is plugged in, DM @urbancomms or email communicate@urbancomms.com and let us know of other tools you think do the job even better.

• Ahead in Adoption does not necessarily mean being at the edge of discovery, but ahead of the mainstream.
• Connected means having lots of connections, but important that there is a range of them.
• Traveller means having more frequent contact with other countries, their people and most importantly their ideas and perspectives.
• Information hungry people who always want to learn more, constantly seeking out and exchanging new facts and ideas.
• Being Vocal does not necessarily mean loud and dominant; but keen to discuss thoughts and share information and experiences.
• Exposed to Media refers to people who are voracious consumers of mass media, particularly print or the internet.

Applying this concept to the online landscape, this checklist could help in the process of identifying the influencers and thought leaders in the blogosphere and twitterverse.