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Please read the updated version of this post at:
https://www.hpcnotes.com/p/hpc-on-twitter.html

(Original kept here for reference)

Who are the best HPC people on twitter?

A good question posed by Suhaib Khan (@suhaibkhan) - which he made tougher by saying "pick your top 5". A short debate followed on twitter but I thought the content was useful enough to record in a blog post for community reference. I also strongly urge anyone to provide further input to this topic and I'll update this post.

Some rules (mine not Suhaib's):
What are the minimum set of accounts you can follow and still expect to catch most of the HPC news, gossip, opinion pieces, analysis and key technical content? How to avoid too much marketing? How to access comment and debate beyond the news headlines? Which HPC people are not only active but also interactive on twitter? I cheated a little on the "top 5" by suggesting 4 themes:

First, the overall winner - unambiguously in my view: @HPC_Guru - "if it has not been mentioned by @HPC_Guru, then it's not real #HPC news!" Second, according to taste, pick your favorite news outlet: @HPCwire @insideHPC @scwmagazine @SciCom @isgtw ... [list is not exhaustive or in any order - caveat - avoid offence ...] Third, keep up with the two main events of the HPC community: @Supercomputing and @ISChpc Fourth, following your own tastes, pick one or two comment/opinion tweeters: e.g. @addisonsnell @arthurrge @suhaibkhan @hpcnotes @KpDooty @paul_henning ... there are many people out there. I suggested the next category would be the big supercomputing centers - e.g., @NCSAatIllinois @TACC @NERSC @EPCCed - there are many more [again, list is not exhaustive or in any order - caveat - avoid offence ...]. I didn't list these accounts as a theme above, because I think Rule 1 above negates this - I'd argue that most of the accounts above will retweet/mention the tweets from these supercomputing center accounts.

I also argued that vendor accounts (some of which are good to follow) would not make my top 5 (even top 10) because of Rule 1 (usually Rule 2 also).

I also noted that if you trust ranking sites such as wefollow or klout then 4 people stand out as the must-follow-accounts: @HPCwire @insideHPC @HPC_Guru and - I'm flattered to say - @hpcnotes.

Follow-ups:

@addisonsnell notes that his @intersect360 account picks up @addisonsnell + @ischpc + @supercomputing

@fcannini suggested some additional HPC accounts to look at: http://www.twitter.com/fcannini/status/391259807619227648 (I'll leave the reader to place these into the themes above)

The most obvious thing to follow for HPC on twitter - #HPC (although you'll have to put up with #HPC being used as a hashtag by some other communities too).