As Social Networks contract measuring online influence becomes harder
When it comes to measuring online influence sites like Klout and PeerIndex tend to polarize opinion, people either love them or hate them. Often the reason for hating them has more to do with the persons on insecurities than anything scientific and for some the reason to love them is much the same.
Measuring Online Influence: It's A Small World
Love them or hate them, sites like Klout and PeerIndex have had a significant impact on the social media world. Marketers have been persuaded that they are the way to triage their outreach programs, individuals building personal brands have been convinced that the score matters.
However, in the next twelve to eighteen months all indications are that the backbone of the algorithm these sites use is going to change dramatically. Online influence is primarily a function of two factors, the size of the network a user has and their ability to affect change within that network. Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project reports that an increasing number of online users of social networks are changing their habits. In 2011 63% of users "unfriended" connections, up from 56%, 44% deleted comments and 37% untagged themselves from photos. Add to that the number of users who are now setting their privacy settings to the most restrictive provided and you have a landscape that is becoming increasingly more private in nature.
How Do You Measure Online Influence In A Private Network?
Sites like Klout and PeerIndex require users to be active and open on social networks to be able to produce their numbers. Both systems offer marketers the ability to reach out to users with offers, often referred to as "perks", these perks are awarded based on scores. The sites need a critical mass of online users in their database, in the same way market researchers need large sample databases, because otherwise they have nothing to leverage.
If users continue to follow this trend and become more selective about who they connect with and what they share with those connections then the task of identifying significant numbers of users with online influence is going to get much harder. Marketers need to start now in their efforts to identify alternative methods for identifying the customers and potential customers that they want to connect with based on something other than an arbitrary score.
Measuring Online Influence: Invite Only
Women are especially likely to increasingly exercise more control over their privacy settings on social networks than men and younger users are more likely to "unfriend" than older users. Until very recently Women were consider the easy mark by brands on sites as they were more open to sharing the brands they "liked".
However, if, as the trend data shows, we are moving to an environment where the users are focusing more on real relationships and less on numbers and power networks then brands may well lose their invite to the party. Facebook currently estimates that the average user has 130 connections in their network. If that shrinks to a much smaller number then are brands going to be able to afford the expense of trying to get their message out through, what will become, an increasing number of users?
Are you unfriending this year?
