Influence Influenza

Last week, the Sunday Times launched a new app called The Social List. Set to compete with Klout and Peer index, the app is being positioned as "The definitive measure of the most influential people in the social space."

With social media now such an integral part of most brands' marketing mix, we have seen a rise in these kinds of tools in an attempt to quantify reach and influence. Although most of the tools available so far seem like a poor attempt to apply old forms of measurement to a new medium.

Influence is not something that can easily be measured through various algorithms or keywords, as RAAK Social Media proved when they put Klout to the test with four Twitter bots that automatically tweet.

The four bots tweet once every minute, once every five minutes, once every fifteen minutes and once every thirty minutes, respectively. They were completely anonymous, with no avatars or custom user profiles set, and did not follow anyone. After 80 days, RAAK found that the bot that tweeted every minute had a Klout score of 51 out of 100. This research not only highlights the underlying flaws of social influence measurement tools like Klout, but also forces us to really think about the problems with measuring influence in general.

Influence is relative. Relying on automated tools to inform our opinions on who is "influential" simply seems ridiculous. It is generally agreed that influence is the ability to change behaviour, mindsets or persuade an individual to take some form of action. I think we can all agree that a bot is not or should not be capable of any of these things.

These measurement tools have merely become yet another example of how digital media can distort trustworthy resources or information.

Klout CEO Joe Fernandez recently revealed that over 2,000 companies have purchased their data, which they use to prioritize customers. For example, a high-scoring visitor to a Las Vegas hotel may be awarded a free upgrade. It is also rumoured that Old Spice used Klout scores to decide who they should make personalized greetings from the Old Spice Man for.

We are increasingly seeing brands and individuals trying to demonstrate how their own Internet popularity has real world value. In fact, we are even beginning to see Klout scores showing up on CV's. As these tools do not measure the activity of the people who have been influenced, how valuable is the information? With no scope or context, is measuring online value more about stroking our own egos?

A part of me believes that it goes back to our obsession as a society with the cult of the celebrity. We all want to feel as though we are important. Twitter is still a frontier that users can conquer, and to create fame for themselves. Shit My Dad Says amassed 2.3 million followers, and was turned into a book and TV show. This self-made fame is, in many ways, similar to the rise of MySpace celebs in the middle part of the last decade. As Fernandez stated, A VIP on the Internet should be treated that way offline too: or so the idea goes. "It's like a social credit score."

But, again, we come back to this question of influence. Are these individuals and brands actually influencing people, or do they just have a high reach? This obviously varies case-to-case, and profiling users is an essential part of determining this. If these measurement tools began to look at keywords, links, bios and content from updates, we might actually get a better perspective into the real world impact that these influencers have.

Laura Scott is a Digital Strategist at Addiction Innovation. She has a Klout score of 52.