How influential are you?
Fast Company's Influence Project is undoubtedly designed to appeal to the narcissist in all of us.
The driving force behind the idea is to do as it says on the tin - find out who are the most influential people online right now. The project states:
"Influence is not only about having the most friends or followers. Real influence is about being able to affect the behaviour of those you interact with, to get others in your social network to act on a suggestion or recommendation.
"When you post a link or recommend a site, how many people actually bother to check it out? And what's the likelihood of those people then forwarding it on? How far does your influence spread?"
As a measure of that influence, Fast Company will allocate points for the number of people who click on a unique URL that is created for those that sign up. That is seen as the primary measure of someone's influence, which is of course a fairly simplistic measurement.
And the payback for getting involved is having your photo appear in the November issue of the magazine. For those that wield the most influence, or get the most clicks on their URL, the bigger the photo.
Depending on your point of view, it is either harmless fun or an asinine popularity contest with no real value whatsoever.
Here in the Valley, it has certainly got tongues wagging.
The influential Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land noted:
"Steve Jobs decides not to include Flash on the iPad, which causes a huge ripple among web publishers. That's influence! But this 'Influence Project' will measure none of that.
"It's fair to say that some of the most influential people on the web aren't going to take the time register in a project, to begin with. I mean, they're influential! As part of being influential, they're probably busy doing the things that made them influential in the first place, not worrying about proving their influence.
"Can you see Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, Carol Bartz or Steve Jobs - all of whom are fairly influential people on the web - taking time from running their companies to register?"
Amber Naslund of Brass Tacks Thinking.com signed up and is sorry she did:
"I'm sad that there wasn't more to this. I was expecting something different, something meaningful, something that shows that influence isn't about numbers and eyeballs and fleeting stabs of attention in the maelstrom of 140-character snippets."
And another influencer, Mike Arrington, editor of TechCrunch.com is resting his tongue firmly in his cheek.
"Join me in my quest to put Chevy Chase, with an afro, on the cover of Fast Company Magazine. My work will then be done here."
The New York Times has called it a "link baiting pyramid scheme" while the Huffington Post posted that the Influence Project will "burst every social media guru's bubble".
Fast Company's Mark Borden seems to admit that the project is not perfect but it could be interesting all the same.
"It's a wild, unwieldy, imperfect, and hopefully fun way to take a look at the wild, unwieldy, imperfect and certainly fun world of social media."
I apologise in advance for my vanity, but I have of course signed up to test out how much sway I hold in the online world. Alas so far my rating at the time of writing is er zero!
Who do you think is the most influential person online today and how should influence be measured?
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~07~RS~)
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There you are Maggie, I clicked on your link for you.
You might find your 'Influence' rating rises if you put something like 'I clicked on this link and my ratings went up !' at the start of your text before explaining what actually happens.
As it is Maggie, clicking on your link means that I am apparently influenced by Michael Harrington.
The site itself is dreadfully slow and is seemingly quite pointless from a users point of view although marketeers will probably have a field day, spammers and phishers love this kind of thing as well.
It is one of these useless vanity websites that say 'Hey look at me, aren't I cool, I have lots of influence'. Sadly it will probably be a raging success.
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I agree that The Influence Project will be a raging success, in spite of the fact that it is unable to show who really is the most influential person on the Internet, which Maggie highlights when she states that those who have the most influence are far too busy being influential to have time to register! However, I do think Fast Company's new scheme will get people talking and provide entertainment.
It would be a near impossible task to label an individual as 'the most influential person online', because there is such variety and diversity on the Internet. There is also extreme difficultly in 'measuring' who the most influential person is, especially if we consider the way in which social media campaigns can influence the way in which people vote (think back to Rage Against The Machine's Christmas chart-topper!) If we were to try and select one sole individual who we would class as 'most influential', we would have a complicated and complex task on our hands. Maybe it's best left to web users looking to have a bit of a laugh... www.article10.com
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It is merely this decade's 'Hot or Not?'. And about as relevant to the rest of us. And, just like the person (whoever it was) that ultimately got the most votes on 'Hot or Not?' didn't go on to become a world-famous supermodel, whoever "wins" this accolade will probably not have a great deal of real influence at all.
Their error is in allowing people to sign themselves up: this is rather like the BBC running it's '100 Greatest Britons' poll, and allowing people to add themselves! This should really have been about letting people NOMINATE who they thought was the most influential, which is much more likely to produce a more accurate result.
In any case, it's not even about the technology behind it: a simple link saying 'Enter our Billion Dollar Draw' is bound to get more clicks than 'Vote for Me'... which has far more to do with psychological influence than technological.
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Sounds like there's a big flaw in their plan. The people with the most followers will automatically have more people retweeting their content as they have the largest reach. Influence should be measured proportionately. So the percentage of followers retweeting needs to be taken into account.
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A gimmick with a lifespan of a moth
No one with any real influence on the web - such a as Stephen Fry - is going to bother with this; nor particularly care about their ‘influence rating’.
The blogs that do have significant influence e.g. Huffington Post, The Register, Techcrunch etc are produced as collective collaborations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs
I doubt that sites such as ClimateAudit or RealClimate (both influential) would give a fudge either.
Most sites also keep count of how many hits they get, how long people spend on a page and so on. They already know their worth.
Some bloggers know that they’re influential, having built a loyal audience. I doubt they’d care much how they compare to any other blogger – or would appear on the Influence Project’s radar.
This young blogger for example regularly is one of the most popular of the regular posters on YouTube and regularly attracts half a million hits a week for her beauty and fashion tips .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz1nMN_NeoA&feature=channel
How do you measure her influence?
Do you think she'd be bothered about the Influence Project?
People that are successful tend to realise it.
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SheffTim wrote:
No one with any real influence on the web - such a as Stephen Fry - is going to bother with this; nor particularly care about their ‘influence rating’.
As much as I love Stephen Fry I'm at a loss as to why you think he's much of an influence in the on-line world.
I can't think of anything he's managed to achieve with all of his Twitter followers and Apple fanboy antics other than to raise the occasional smile, smirk or whatever.
I'm not trying to attack Mr Fry, the guy is one of my favourite actors/comedians, I just can't see what influence he's supposed to have, especially compared to the likes of Larry Page and Tristant Nitot or even Keith Collantine and Arianna Huffington.
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General JR. #6
OK, let me re-phrase it.
No one with any real influence on the web - such as Larry Page and Tristant Nitot or even Keith Collantine and Arianna Huffington - is going to bother with this; nor particularly care about their ‘influence rating’.
Fry has his followers and his tech pronouncements probably do influence some of those that read his blog or follow his tweets.
But it’s an interesting point about how do we measure ‘influence’ outside of a ‘hot or not’ popularity contest?
Most blogs (Fry, Collantine etc) tend to be about single issues; some help shape debate, opinions and events in that area.
Page and Brin founded Google. Google is clearly a major industry mover and shaker. But how much do the general public – the industry outsiders (and most don’t read tech blogs) – pay attention to Page and Brin’s opinions?
I doubt many have ever heard of Nitot, despite his eminence in web standards.
The YouTube example I gave above was deliberately chosen.
Bubz (aka Lindy Tsang) clearly is popular and doubtless is a mover and shaker in teenage fashion (and also runs a business selling fashion products), at least amongst those that use YouTube.
How can we compare and rank Tsang with Collantine, Brin, Fry or Huffington?
We’re simply not comparing like with like.
Another reason why Influence Project is no more than just another start-up of little interest. You might as well judge ‘influence’ by the number of friends on FaceBook. (Just joking there.)
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@ SheffTim
Fair enough mate, I can't help but to agree with you.
It's certainly an interesting subject, in the good/bad old days this wouldn't really be an issue; everyone would have known who Isambard Kingdom Brunel or George Stephenson were and that they were some of the most influential movers and shakers of their day but the on-line world has muddled this one up quite a lot.
It has also made it possible for a total unknown to become the most influential figure of the day by breaking a big story, video or document onto sites like youtube and wikileaks that then spreads around the whole web in a matter of minutes; although the fleeting nature of the internet could mean that they're the most influential person in the world on Monday but most people had forgotten about them by Friday.
This is something I like about the internet, anyone with an internet connection can contribute to what other people are thinking about and it is now much easier for an individual from outside of the establishment to get their voice heard.
And with my 250 Facebook friends I think I may be the most influential pensioner on HYS ;-)
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Why do we need this? We already know that Ashton Kutcher (http://twitter.com/aplusk) is the most influential. He was the first on Twitter to gain a million sychophants (sorry followers) watching his 140 char emissions in awe and wonderment.
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'Why do we need this? We already know that Ashton Kutcher (http://twitter.com/aplusk) is the most influential. He was the first on Twitter to gain a million sychophants (sorry followers) watching his 140 char emissions in awe and wonderment.' DougieLawson
Exactly. Like mistaking X Factor winners for figures that push artistic boundaries, or influence audiences and/or future musicians.
Compare:
Steve Brookstein
Shayne Ward
Leona Lewis
Leon Jackson
Alexandria Burke
Joe Mcelderry
With:
The Beatles (Or Lennon, McCartney or Harrison individually)
Noel Gallagher
Aretha Franklin
Michael Jackson
Madonna
Jay Z
Does watching/reading/listening (or posting) figures mean people give more weight (influence) to whoever is most popular?
I'd hope most people think a bit more deeply than that.
The other flaw in Influence Project's set-up is that most people will quickly find out that they're not (or are barely) influential at all; and won't stick around. This is a one hit site. There's no reason to go back; and those that are successful or realistic won't bother in the first place.
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Hey, Maggs-- The Golden Gate Bridge isn't in the Silicon Valley. It's an hour away in San Francisco. Like standing in front of a Westminster for reporting on Coventry. The Google campus is in Cupertino and eBay is in Campbell. Adobe is in downtown San Jose (the capital of the Silicon Valley), and Netflix is in Los Gatos. That's just for starters. I'd be happy to give you a tour, but the bottom line is that the Valley isn't San Francisco ("the City"), love it though we do.
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I think this is great...
http:/fcinf.com/v/cvds
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11. At 01:59am on 09 Jul 2010, MayaPapaya wrote:
...The Google campus is in Cupertino and eBay is in Campbell. Adobe is in downtown San Jose (the capital of the Silicon Valley), and Netflix is in Los Gatos...
Sorry to be the pedant, but it's Apple who are in Cupertino - Google are located in Mountain View. Also, eBay seem to be based in San Jose these days, not Campbell (where they were originally located).
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I wonder how much startup venture capital this virus raised - anyone care to find out?
Must be nice to risk other people's money and not suffer the consequences of your actions when all that fails. Hey, Bankers are sounding more like politicians all the time.
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The “Influence Project” or the “Online Gullibility Project”?
Give away your personal contacts for a chance to be the most influential person?
Ogilvy’s PR is a bit of mishmash: apparently it maps patterns of influence to identify who is influencing who, how word-of-mouth influence builds momentum, and who emerges in specific fields of interest as digital influencers. (Can anyone translate this for me?)
The Fast Company Influence Project is nothing more than link merging - you know linking links to links to links to links to links....
How seriously can one take a "project" that assumes that re-tweeting something and more directly link clicking is an accurate measure of influence? If someone clicks on your link and signs up for the program, you get extra points because you were so influential.
The Influence Project appears to be supporting link-baiting or link-merging. The “Influence Project" is all about increasing site traffic
How can I tell?
The creation of a separate URL; in this way they avoid the criticism surrounding link-baiting (or linking to sites which you may not want).
To those of you who have joined:
Spam up?
Think about this “Influence Project” reward: your picture online, a picture that you provide yourself and that gets bigger the more “onfluence” you demonstrtate. Wow, talk about running on narcissism!
(I read somewhere that) TechCrunch will hold a contest to see who can click the most ad units on its site. Winner gets called “The Most Awesome Person Online” and TeleCrunch will put their picture on its home page for a full day…and provide free T-shirt!
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Every time I read about this inane and vacuous project, the lyrics to ABC's "Vanity Kills" come to mind:
I'm glad you've found someone who loves you
But sad to say that someone is you
And now perhaps you'll both be happy
Guess that makes two just you and you
Someone who cares so much about you
But does that someone have to be you
Vanity kills, it don't pay bills
Vanity kills, you love you
etc...
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I agree that the whole project is just a bit of fun, but I thought I'd have some. It was going to be interesting to see who in my network would do me a favour and register via my link and who in my network then took part and has a network that will do them a favour etc.
The response to my requests has been poor - but I allowed for the slowness of the site etc and wasn't too unhappy.
What has really cheesed me off is that Fast Company states its measurement system and has then demonstrably ignored it for quite a few of the undeserved high ranking 'players'. Is this deliberate or incompetence - I don't know but it sure reduces a bit of fun to a farce (as at 22nd July).
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Influence Project type promotions will succeed in the end because they are offering some individuals a chance to prove their worth in a forum which suggests to measure the truly influential alongside the common man who's looking for an audience.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
its very important for every business to influence people with their project or products
Sandy
http://knol.google.com/k/anonymous/how-to-gain-friends-and-influence-people/107f3fimo7l5f/15#
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