Volvo has integrated a Twitter feed into an ad on YouTube. It is very nicely done, particularly as some of the tweets are from Volvo Execs at a motor show.
Volvo Tweets *in* YouTube Ad
Dirk van Graver at “Record | Preserve | Share” has commented on a business week article that asks us to imagine one number that sums up how influential we are. It is a subject I discussed some time ago, when I was craving a golden ratio in relation to social networking.
Back then I said;
It is pretty obvious Trust would be a great dimension for social networks to embrace. So would Influence or Buzz (or both). And when elements like this are developed I believe Social Networks will be onto something very significant indeed.
If you didn’t follow the link, according to the Business Week piece, Google has a patent pending “for ranking the most influential people on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.”
It is a great idea. Clearly if this works, it would finally make adverts on social networks relevant and potentially profitable.
It would seem (if the report is to be believed) that Google is applying the same approach to social networks that it has used to dominate the online search business (it would be like a page rank). Apparently the Google approach would take into account all manner of aspects of influence, from ‘how many’ people you know, to ‘how frequently’ you talk with them, to ‘how strongly’ they value your opinion. So your ‘score’ could be compared with that of pretty much anyone in the world. A personal Google ‘influence score’ if you like.
Hear are my hopes and fears:
FEAR #1: I worry that if an influence score is used to justify, or generate a monitization strategy for social networking sites, the emphasis on what constitutes ‘influence’ must start on a sound footing. This is an area that I really don’t want to see messed up – as I’m not sure many social networking sites can withstand high profile failures at monitization.
FEAR # 2: If influence is measured by Google, (or anyone else) surely everyone will be able to find their (or their companies, or their competitors) biggest advocates or doomsayers? Yes? Well I cannot see that happening accurately. I would be very surprised if your biggest influencers are known by you (i.e connected to you) and so how do Google propose to measure or track that? And in fact, surely influencers by definition are 3rd parties (i.e. are unconnected to you) in the first place?
Hey, maybe I missed something and that is the whole reason why Google is exploring this.
Which brings me on to my great hope.
Hope #1: I hope how ‘many’ people you know (‘follow’, ‘connect’ with, ‘add’ as a friend) is not closely related to your degree of influence. Those fools who have adopted a strategy of following ‘en-masse’ in Twitter (in the hope that a high percentage will return the favour) must not be seen by advertising buyers and sellers as ‘influencial’. They are not. Bob with 1000 friends is not necessarily more influential than Susan with just 85.
Equally seniority isn’t the be-all either. John the 46 year old bachelor & CEO is not necessarily more influential than Raphael the 28 year old IT Manager, who is a father of two. And postcode xyz, doesn’t bear higher influencers than postcode 123, in the same way that an OxBridge student shouldn’t be seen as more influencial that a 2:2 student from a ‘lesser’ ranked university. My hope is that an influence algorithm doesn’t arbitrarily look at volumes and a set of pre-determined values and rules.
Influence is, I believe, far more multi dimensional and complex than that.
If this becomes a reality what are your hopes and fears for ‘Influencer’ tracking? I’d love to here your views.
Adam Kmiec is an Interactive Marketer at Colle+McVoy. His presentation on Slideshare about micro interactions is well worth looking at.
There is a good piece in silicon.com today about LinkedIn, and how their CEO believes that it is very different to Facebook and the other social networking sites.
I agree, and somewhat bizarrely disagree completely.
I’m very much in tune with LinkedIn’s CEO and his thinking about LinkedIn’s role and ‘reason for being’. In fact I really struggle to understand why B2B professionals would not want to use the service – truth be told I am amazed it’s free.
But to assign other social networking sites into a ‘juvenile’ camp is naive. Maybe it is just semantics, and I am reading too much into it?
Take Twitter for instance. Over the last few days I have been following various people as they post comments (tweets) in real-time about events at SXSW (a music, film, and interactive conference and festival) particularly the uncomfortable keynote with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook‘s CEO) and Business Week‘s Sarah Lacy.
Hilarious. Live. Connected. Interactive. And certainly not juvenile.
Ok. Possibly not as thought-provoking or grammatically sound as a blog or elements of LinkedIn (e.g. Answers) but as a forum to share a stream-of-conscious babblings. Ideal.
Now the blogosphere is catching up on the whole Zuckerberg thang- with more detailed descriptions and reviews. But ultimately I learnt a great lesson in my use of Twitter over the last 48hrs. Its sufficiently different. Spectacularly different. And if you follow the appropriate people – seriously grown up.
Just like LinkedIn. Only different.
By the way I am here if you want to connect My LinkedIn Profile, My Twitter
I have mentioned Lee and Sachi LeFever’s WIKI and RSS video’s before.
Their latest video is all about Twitter – and again is worth watching.
Use Twitter? Follow me here. Be warned I am new to this!
