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This page has been updated to reflect new information on Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s Facebook presence.

Based on Mufi Hannemann‘s 600,000 Twitter followers, you might guess that half the population of Hawaii is following the mayor.

Logical conclusions could include that our mayor is either a) a bulldozer in the governor’s election, 2) a political star of international celebrity proportions, c) a Twitter genius.

Not quite.

Sometime after Hanneman’s account was started in March 2009, the San-Francisco-based company Twitter, through an infamously opaque process, put on the highly coveted Suggested Users List (SUL), a now retired Twitter feature that helped assign a select group of accounts to new Twitter users. The typical result is hundreds of thousands of followers in a relatively short stretch of time.

“Mufi is proud that he has over 600,000 followers on Twitter,” said A.J. Halagao, campaign manager. “Mufi is also honored that Twitter chose him to be a Suggested User. As it is up to Twitter on who is a Suggested User, only they can confirm how they chose Mufi’s page.”

The list is a powerful tool for any account to gain influence, but the number of followers can also hide the true effectiveness of the account. A significant portion of followers who come to an account through the SUL are typically spammers, folks still learning how to use twitter, or accounts that are abandoned.

Twitter’s arbitrary decision to put Hannemann on the list put his Twitter account ahead of his opponents by the hundreds of thousands, perhaps giving him an unfair advantage. But a closer analysis of Twitter, as you’ll see, shows that despite his enormous edge, it’s a much more even playing field.

An unscientific look at the followers of the main contenders for the governor’s seat this fall would seem to show that Hannemann’s campaign is crushing the opposition. Here’s the breakdown:

• : 619,814
• : 3,270
• : 6,168

It’s a much different view of the election than shown in a poll last month. Those findings by Rasmussen Reports show that former Congressman Neil Abercrombie leads the Republican Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona 58-32 percent and Hannemann leads Aiona 52-30 percent.

If the poll had been based on the number of Twitter followers, Hannemann has more than 189 times Aiona’s total and more than 100 times the number for Abercrombie.

The Twitter figures are not to be completely discounted, especially after President Barack Obama’s savvy social media campaign that eventually helped him win the election.

But there’s another way to measure the success of a social media effort besides just Twitter followers.

Using some of the most popular free services online that evaluate the influence of specific Twitter accounts, we find a difference that’s much less stark.

, for instance, is a tool that measures influence by your number of retweets. (A retweet is when another Twitter user sends your tweet out under his or her own name.) Out of 100, here’s how their influence ranks:

• @MufiHannemann: 56.9
• @DukeAiona2010: 43.3
• @NeilAberbrombie: 55.6

The site also ranks “Trust,” which is determined by an algorithm of mentions and retweets. This is how the candidates score on Trust:

• @MufiHannemann: 43.9
• @DukeAiona2010: 24.9
• @NeilAberbrombie: 41.4

By all measures, it appears that Hannemann comes in first, closely followed by Abercrombie. Aiona comes in third.

The numbers still mirror the number of followers the candidates have — after all, the number of followers beget influence — but the numbers are not as stark as before. Put another way, one safe prognostication would be that Hannemann won’t win 100 times more votes than Abercrombie in the Sept. 18 primary.

If you look at the number of Facebook fans and friends of the three, which are much more difficult to manipulate than Twitter followers, the rankings are opposite of what Twitter suggests.

Aiona has the most fans and friends, followed by Abercrombie. And Hannemann comes in last.

• Mufi Hannemann : 4,676 (See “Update” below regarding his profile page.)
• Neil Abercrombie’s : 4,988
• Neil Abercrombie’s : 2,446
• Duke Aiona’s : 5,004
• Duke Aiona’s : 5,658

It’s little wonder social media is not typically used as a political poll.

Update

You won’t be able to search for it until today, but as it turns out, Mayor Mufi Hannemann actually has another Facebook army of about 5,000 friends waiting in the wings.

The Hannemann campaign for governor called this morning to say that we missed Hannemann’s profile page because you can’t search for it on Facebook.

Facebook caps the number of friends on profile pages to 5,000 in an effort to drive celebrities and other popular public figures to fan pages. There’s no limit on the number of people who can be fans. Owners of fan pages can advertise them on Facebook or elsewhere and have more flexibility in designing their page. When Hannemann’s profile page hit the 5,000 limit, the campaign made the profile unsearchable to encourage people to join his fan page. The campaign has changed the settings today to make Hannemann’s profile page accessible through search.

As a result, the updated Facebook rankings, by friends and fans, would be:

• Mufi Hannemann’s : 5,000
• Mufi Hannemann’s : 4,676
• Neil Abercrombie’s : 4,988
• Neil Abercrombie’s : 2,446
• Duke Aiona’s : 5,004
• Duke Aiona’s : 5,658

The new rankings put Aiona in the No. 1 spot on Facebook, followed by Hannemann and Abercrombie.

DISCUSSION: Could Twitter’s decision to put Mufi Hannemann on the Suggested Users List have an impact on the governor’s election? Talk about it in our Hawaii Politics conversation.