What is Influence?
May 2nd, 2011 § 8 Comments
Empire Avenue is a gateway and a facilitator. It is a connector and a learning tool. Empire Avenue is not an influence metric, Empire avenue is not a social network. On the surface it is a game, or a gamified social experience but it does not attempt to rank our exposure to the followers of these networks. Quite the contrary, Empire Avenue makes you a player in these networks.
The real question on everyone’s minds for the past 9-12 months is “why are we crafting new definitions for the word influence?” In the Klout context, influence is a mashup of exposure vs. popularity. For PeerIndex it’s popularity vs. depth. What we do know is that influence is not synonymous with advertising appeal or celebrity, nor is it being tracked by any algorithm currently at play in social media.
So why the confusion? Are we really mired in the late 70′s/early 80′s mindset that if our kids listen to heavy metal music that they will start stealing cars, bullying kids, and biting the heads off of small woodland creatures? Vis a vis, what influence to online celebrities yield? For there to be an influencer there must be someone who has been influenced. In what ways are we being influenced by the people we engage with online?
To date I can only recall being influenced by four people I have interacted with online. Jeff Jarvis altered the way that I approach our educational system. Amber Osborne (e)MSDSTO taught me to loosen up and be myself, to see myself as a writer, not an aspiring journalist. Anita Kissee, a local news broadcaster and Columbia PhD taught me that it’s ok to be overeducated and underpaid if you are meeting or exceeding the goals you placed for yourself at the start. Robert Hernandez reinvigorated my fundamental approach to journalism. Only one of them has a Klout score higher than mine.
In this context, influence is a VERY powerful thing. Do we want to engage with the people who have truly influenced others? Of course we do, but using statistics and metrics is akin to scanning market data to find your new favorite ice cream. Find people who like ice cream. Engage with them, hold discussions and share ideas about what makes a good ice cream. Take what you’ve learned to the streets and conduct your own research and then share that, too.
This is social networking, this is #SocialEmpire.
If you aren’t yet a member of Empire Avenue, click here: http://empireavenue.com/?t=2d37n01u
To engage in conversations like this and get a better understanding of how Empire works, request to join the #SocialEmpire Group on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_199205256763591&ap=1
Very thoughtful post, Ryan.
As you already know, I am not as impressed by Empire Avenue as others. (To their great credit, they removed my information from their site after my first request.) I am uncomfortable with the idea of other people “buying” and “selling” shares in my online persona and the potential for such activities to be gamed (in the negative sense) by people who do not know me, even virtually, and may have other motives.
I appreciate your linking to my blog post (http://circleofignorance.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/i-am-not-for-sale/) on the #SocialEmpire group and want to call your attention to some excellent comments that have been posted there. Perhaps one way to measure the success or “influence” as a blogger is the ability to elicit comments that are even better than the original post. (If so, this counts as my most successful post to date.)
I had considered Tal’s analogy to sports statistics. Klout, PeerIndex, Twitalyzer, etc. measure social media activity through algorithms that may be incomplete but are at least fairly objective in that they treat all accounts alike.
One thing I completely agree with: the true value of influence cannot be captured in a number. When I discover someone who shares interesting information and makes me think, I want to “[e]ngage with them, hold discussions and share ideas about what makes a good ice cream.” You are becoming one of those people. Thanks.
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Numbers don’t make the person and influence can be reviewed from more than just cause and effect. All three sites have their won way to offer numbers as a way to evaluate your activity and connections, but I don’t take these to mean anything specific. I have learned more from using Empire Avenue and the stats than I have from seeing a numbers from Klout or PeerIndex. Its all in the action and connection. Otherwise its bloated activity akin to a marketing shout box and people collections.
You, Ryan, have influenced me in the way I think about the information I consume and to be more thoughtful in my writing ;) Empire Avenue, Klout and PeerIndex didn’t “show” me a thing about that!
Aww, thanks Nakeva! I thought less about comparing Klout/PeerIndex to Empire Avenue than I did in questioning the concept of influence and what it means to each vs. reality.
To use an exaggerated (and possibly distasteful) analogy, Osama Bin Laden was (and possibly still is) FAR more influential than Barrak Obama but on the Internet Obama is considered to be more influential because of his relative popularity. If you want to talk about real influence, however, you have to consider who received greater response from his respective following when a call to action was issued?
That’s influence and it has nothing to do with metrics.
Ryan that is a good analogy (time relative as well). When someone mentions influence they usually think in terms of what that influential person was able to do with action; what did that person get other people to “do?” I see influence as more than just what one can get another person to do, but then we are talking about thought leaders. Synonymous? Maybe.
Even “thought leader” has become somewhat cliche and contextualized beyond its relevance. Hell, I’ve been described as a thought leader, c’mon.
In the truest sense I suppose Klout et al do a good job of identifying thought leaders, with RT’s and such, but for every person out there posting brilliant original content, there are 5,000 others getting hundreds of RT’s simply copy/pasting quotes.
Influence is easy to formulate but impossible to quantify. How do you convert this equation into a metric?
influencer * persons influenced * action evoked = influence
The problem here is that ‘influence metrics’ consider any and every tweet to be an action. You RT’ing a tweet about Justin Bieber is equally influential as a teenager posting a malicious tweet about a classmate which inspires 15 other classmates to bully the target. In my opinion netting 1 real action is far more influential than being retweeted 10,000 times if those 10,000 result in 0 activity beyond hitting the button.
Good post Ryan. Empire Avenue, Klout, PeerIndex, are based from algorithms therefore they are quantitative in nature. Being a sports fan, a comparison I can make is looking at an athlete’s stats versus the impact he/she has on the game. The people you mentioned in your post may not have the “stats” to be considered influential but the quality of your interaction clearly had an impact in your life. Stats don’t always tell the whole story and neither do these “influence” measuring tools.
Great comparison, Tal. Wish I’d thought of the athlete reference!