Just because you are popular, doesn't mean you have any influence

Over the past year I’ve been following the work of Dr. Bernardo Huberman, director of HP Labs’ Social Computing Lab, and his team. HP has been applying rigorous scientific practices to the study of social media and it has a gold mine of research open to the public.

via www.zdnet.com

Tom Foremski's great analysis of HP's data on influence and popularity should make us all stop and think about what we're trying to accomplish

Comments

[Pablo Edwards]

Amen. I couldn't have said it better myself. Now we just have to tell the popular guys!

[Theelusivefish]

One thing that struck me about this study was the list of 'low relative influence', topped by @ThatKevinSmith.

Now, I'm guessing the folks at SouthWest would disagree on Kevin having low influence.

Thing is, influence isn't necessarily something that's exercised day in and day out. It's not about number of RTs and links clicked, but rather, when a person delivers their St. Crispin's day speech and marches into fire it's having a crowd happily charge right behind them into those flames.

That's not something that is going to be readily predictable from the metrics of twitter alone. We need to start looking at the wider picture and not just within the confines of a given walled garden.

- Rob Clark
http://disclz.me/RobClark

[David Geddes]

Katie -- This is indeed important work. In fact, I've organized a panel discussion at the IPR Summit on Measurement on understanding and measuring influence and engagement. Joining me will be Anne Fenice from Yahoo!, Jason Forget from GE, and Zach Hofer-Shall from Forrester Research. I trust this will spark discussion and thought n what influence is and how we should be measuring it.