The Communications Room

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In the last few months Twitter has undoubtedly reached a critical mass where it’s actually interesting to follow people for even the most vocal cynic. And whilst there isn’t much of a business model yet, it’s certainly proved that it’s going to be around for a while. Obama effectively used it in the election and more recently the tragic events in Mumbai showed that it’s an insightful source and a rapid distributer of news. So this post isn’t proclaiming the death or hate for any kind of social tool but more about my growing concerns with how they are used and more importantly how influence is defined and measured,.

One of the big things that I find frustrating is the misunderstanding of influence versus popularity. So after some Googlelizing I came across this great post from Shel Israel that pretty much sums up the dark side of social media and highlights why numerical metrics really only measure popularity as opposed to influence which is somewhat of an anomaly at the moment. Here’s an exerpt…

“Suppose I were a political blogger and I had an audience of just three followers. Those followers were very engaged because they read everything I posted. They commented often. They took what I said and quoted me to other people in other conversations. But there were only three of them. Therefore I would be ranked lower than chopped liver in all the ranking systems. The catch is that those three readers were the President of the US, and the heads of China and Russia”

Don’t get me wrong there’s a valid element of communicating with friends and peers but there seems to be a growing number of ‘influencers’ and ’social media consultants’ who have found an art of saying something without saying anything at all. I often find myself falling into the social media popularity trap. However reality takes hold and I have to ask myself am I really contributing anything to the conversation or merely smoring (social media whoring) my sorry ass! Sorry, negative post over.