If Twitter is any indication, Ultimate Bet sponsored pro Joe Sebok (@JoeSebok) is the 177th most popular guy on the internet. At least, that is the ranking Twitter tracking site Twitterholic gave to Sebok based on his number of followers, which now exceeds one million.
His massive and dedicated group of Twitter fans puts him on par with sports reporter Bill Simmons, the publication Newsweek, comedian Kevin Nealon, and the musician Moby in terms of popularity. By comparison, Ashton Kutcher has the most fans with nearly four million, followed by Britney Spears and Ellen Degeneres. Twitterers who wish they had the traffic of Sebok include Dr. Phil McGraw (175,000 followers), reality star Lauren Conrad (748,500 followers), and the NASA space program (164,000 followers).
Perhaps in a testament to the popularity of Sebok’s poker entertainment website, PokerRoad, “Poker After Dark” announcer Ali Nejad (@Ali_Nejad) is 216th on Twitterholic’s list with more than 840,000 followers. Sebok and PokerRoad have been longtime proponents of the microblogging site. This past summer, they launched a unique Twitter platform called PokerRoad Nation, which organized poker-related Tweets from the World Series of Poker (WSOP). The platform sorted tweets based on events, former bracelet winners, PokerRoad family members, media members, and several other criteria, allowing followers to customize their WSOP coverage as they saw fit. The PokerRoad Nation platform garnered both poker media and national media attention and Sebok was profiled in the New York Times for the new innovation.
Despite the extensive Twitter-related success, Sebok told Poker News Daily that he is taking the million followers in stride. “I think that people overvalue this whole Twitter thing,” he explained. “It’s been fun, but it is definitely not an ego boost.”
Sebok also elaborated on how he came to have such a large group of followers. “Twitter decided to put me on their suggested users list and I’ve just been enjoying the ride…It’s been fun.” A longtime music fan, Sebok entertains his followers with frequent album recommendations along with tweets about his antics with his friends and family, which include Gavin Smith (@olegsmith) and his father, Barry Greenstein (@barrygreenstein).
More recently, he has also posted behind the scenes photos from his own appearance on “Poker After Dark” and Greenstein’s appearance on the most recent season of “High Stakes Poker.” On Thursday night, Sebok also documented a disastrous road trip from Las Vegas to Los Angeles with Greenstein where their truck broke down on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Never fear, PokerRoad fans, Sebok and Greenstein made it back to Los Angeles in one piece.
Sebok had to make his way back to Los Angeles to get the last-minute details together on his latest project, the Fox Sports poker news show “Poker 2Nite.” The show, which will be sponsored by Ultimate Bet, is set to begin airing on Wednesdays at 11:00pm ET starting on November 25th. Sebok told Poker News Daily he and co-host Scott Huff will be filming the first show on Tuesday night. Sebok hopes that the series can capitalize on the heightened interest in poker following Joe Cada’s recent WSOP Main Event victory and become a mainstay on the cable network.
Fans will likely hear more about “Poker 2Nite” in the coming days via his Twitter, but any followers expecting some commemorative posting in honor of hitting the million-person mark shouldn’t hold their breath. Sebok said he did not plan anything special in honor of crossing the benchmark and will continue tweeting as usual.
Not planning anything special, except that $24k in added prizes blowout tournament in celebration!