Seeing the steadily rising number of followers on our social media profiles can be quite gratifying. Validating even, especially for those only starting to get hooked to social networking, and brands wanting to watch their follower base grow online. For them, this can be a gauge to see their progress online; or at least serve as a great motivator. The growing figures can be quite encouraging to help them to get more involved, and invest more time and resources on the social Web. An app called MVF can even name your most valuable friends and followers online.

MVF, or the aptly called Most Valuable Friend/Follower, is a Web app that does exactly that, and even offers to show you your top five followers. The app was created for fun by developers Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld who used practical economics while shaping its algorithm.

“Value is hard to define. We build this application to try and do that.” Taub and Shonfeld said on their site’s About page. “We look at value as one would look at a commodity. The more scarce it is, the more valuable it is. This is what we had in mind when determining value.”

In addition to this, the app also takes into account follower/friend popularity to determine who the “most valuable” people are in every user’s roster.

As promising as this app can be, it can be, for the most part, hit or miss. This the duo admits, “We tried to find a good balance of popularity and scarcity. It works at times, other times it doesn’t. We think it works more than it doesn’t.” Despite this, MVF can still give you’re a sneak peek of the most popular people in your buddy lists.

Drop by www.mvfapp.com and you’ll find that it can name your top friend on Facebook and top follower on Twitter. Logging on each will opt the app to scan through your buddy lists to find your top contacts. Agreeing to tweet, or post the result on your Facebook feed will enable it to display your top five followers and/or friends.

Tags: social media marketing, Tool Time, Web Apps