Social Media Index

July 17, 2007 | 230 comments | permalink

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I write this post with some trepidation, because we have come up with a new list and lists I have learned are controversial. Some weeks ago Jonny Bentwood who runs tech analyst relations at Edelman’s London office and I were debating influence and how the Facebook phenomena has changed things. When people talked about on-line influence in the past they were often referring to bloggers and Technorati scores, though obviously influence was always more complicated than that. But now with the increasing mass adoption of Twitter and Facebook and favourites listings like Digg and Del.icio.us things have moved on. Bloggers Twitter and Facebookers Dig. Many of us are multi-platform users and so our online ‘footprint’ is much more dispersed.

So we thought we would have a bash at measuring it. Underlying this attempt is the presumption that a cumulative and comparative score can be assigned for an individual’s use of the various social media platforms that are available. That is no small presumption and the assigning of mechanical scores is a blunt instrument to say the least. How do you compare the influence of a Hugh MacLeod cartoon to a Robert Scoble tech review? Technorati say this about their methodology: “On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc”. So putting numbers to these things and assuming a level of influence from them is not exactly new.

What we have tried to do is add some new ways of measuring influence via platforms like Twitter and Facebook to blog scores. This is definitely adding apples to oranges we admit. So for example, we are placing a score for Facebook depending on the number of friends someone has. For Twitter, it is the number of friends, followers and updates. And if that is not insulting enough, we are then coming to a comparative weighting of someone’s Facebook score against their Twitter and blogging score. And the most sinful step is of course the final one where we have added those scores together and come up with a total Social Media Index. Which is an A list or a league table by another name I suppose. But we are not claiming it is definitive (how can it be with as many value judgements as I just confessed too) and we’re not entirely sure if the thesis itself will stand up. What we hope to do by this is to contribute to the debate and (and if possible) come to a community view of how you look at this. Why? Well, for us it is part of our business and I make no apology about that. Measurement is central to what we do and social media is massively powerful and we need to understand it to do our jobs. Many people do not like this and for them there is no good way of describing this.

So stage one; we created a Top 30 bloggers list from CNET Blog 100, Times Top 50 Business Blogs, Power 150 Top Marketing Blogs, Friendly Ghost Top PR Blogs and Technobabble 2.0 Top Analyst Blogs. A familiar enough grouping, but if you look along the top line you will see the new platforms we intend to combine with this listing.

Top 30 Blog - SMI weighting: 100% blogs

	Name
1	TechCrunch	98	0	0	0	0	0	98
2	Search Engine Watch	98	0	0	0	0	0	98
3	Boing Boing	98	0	0	0	0	0	98
4	GigaOM	97	0	0	0	0	0	97
5	Micro Persuasion	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
6	Scobeleizer	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
7	Scripting News	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
8	John Battelle’s Searchblog	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
9	Techdirt	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
10	Pronet Advertising	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
11	Gaping Void	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
12	Marketing Pilgrim	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
13	Online Marketing Blog	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
14	Copyblogger	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
15	Buzz Machine	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
16	SEOmoz Blog	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
17	Jonathan’s Blog	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
18	The Blog Herald	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
19	direct2dell.com	93	0	0	0	0	0	93
20	Romenesko	93	0	0	0	0	0	93
21	PaidContent.org	92	0	0	0	0	0	92
22	Secret Diary of Steve Jobs	92	0	0	0	0	0	92
23	Web Strategy by Jeremiah	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
24	Adrants	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
25	Seth Godin	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
26	Logic+Emotion	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
27	tompeters!	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
28	GrokDotCom	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
29	PSFK	89	0	0	0	0	0	89
30	adfreak	89	0	0	0	0	0	89

This next chart is the same 30 people, but now we have added individual scores for their use of non-blogging platforms and in the final column come to a total Social Media Index or score for them. Here’s how we did that:

Each person has been given a score out of 10 based upon 6 criteria:

Blog - analysed Google Rank, inbound links, subscribers, alexa rank, content focus, frequency of updates, number of comments
Multi-format - analysed Facebook - number of friends
Mini-updates - analysed Twitter - number of friends, followers and updates
Business cards - analysed LinkedIn - number of contacts
Visual - analysed Flickr - number of photos uploaded from the person/s or about the person/s
Favourites - analysed Digg, del.icio.us

Each score out of 10 was the given the following weighting across the categories : Blog - 30%; Multi-format - 20%; Mini-updates - 25%, Business cards - 7%, Visual - 3%; Favourites - 15% which created a total score for each category. The sum of each of these numbers created an individual’s Social Media Index. Clear as mud. And about as appetising for some I suspect, because the weighting system is massively subjective. I repeat, it is our first stab at it and we are interested in your take.

And these results are vaguely embarrassing for us too, because the conspiracy minded will have noticed that Edelman’s own Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion fame is (drum roll) number one in this (surprise, surprise) Edelman league table. And we know how well that will go down. But the fact is he is so prolific across all platforms it is what it is. Personally I think he needs to do some client work some time.

Top 30 Blogs - SMI tiered weighting
Weighting: Blog - 30%; Multi-format - 20%; Mini-updates - 25%, Business cards - 7%, Visual - 3%; Favourites - 15%

	Name
1	Micro Persuasion	29	17	25	7	2	13	93
2	TechCrunch	29	20	22	0	3	13	87
3	Scobeleizer	29	20	25	0	3	9	86
4	GigaOM	29	20	13	7	3	13	85
5	Gaping Void	28	20	22	3	2	5	80
6	Scripting News	29	16	25	4	2	4	79
7	Web Strategy by Jeremiah	27	15	24	6	3	2	77
8	PSFK	27	16	14	0	3	12	72
9	Marketing Pilgrim	28	8	15	6	2	7	67
10	Adrants	27	5	19	4	1	8	64
11	Online Marketing Blog	28	15	12	0	2	5	62
12	John Battelle’s Searchblog	29	17	0	7	3	5	61
13	Buzz Machine	28	20	0	5	2	5	61
14	Copyblogger	28	13	3	0	0	8	53
15	Seth Godin	27	5	0	0	3	9	45
16	Techdirt	29	0	0	0	3	11	42
17	SEOmoz Blog	28	0	0	5	3	5	41
18	Search Engine Watch	29	0	0	0	0	9	38
19	Boing Boing	29	0	0	0	3	5	38
20	Jonathan’s Blog	28	1	0	0	2	4	36
21	PaidContent.org	27	0	0	0	3	4	34
22	Secret Diary of Steve Jobs	27	0	0	0	0	6	34
23	adfreak	27	0	0	0	0	6	32
24	The Blog Herald	28	0	0	0	0	3	31
25	direct2dell.com	28	0	0	0	0	3	31
26	Pronet Advertising	29	0	0	0	0	2	31
27	Romenesko	28	0	0	0	0	3	31
28	Logic+Emotion	27	0	0	0	1	2	30
29	tompeters!	27	0	0	0	0	3	30
30	GrokDotCom	27	0	0	0	0	3	30

But this list just orders in a new way, a list of top bloggers. We then looked wider a-field to try and come up with a more pure Social Media Index where we have added top scorers not restricted to the blogging top 30. Same methodology, just a wider catchment group. Yes and Steve is still number one.

Top 30 social media index
Weighting: Blog - 30%; Multi-format - 20%; Mini-updates - 25%, Business cards - 7%, Visual - 3%; Favourites - 15%

	Name
1	Micro Persuasion	29	17	25	7	2	13	93
2	TechCrunch	29	20	22	0	3	13	87
3	Scobeleizer	29	20	25	0	3	9	86
4	GigaOM	29	20	13	7	3	13	85
5	Gaping Void	28	20	22	3	2	5	80
6	Scripting News	29	16	25	4	2	4	79
7	Web Strategy by Jeremiah	27	15	24	6	3	2	77
8	/Message	25	20	23	0	3	6	76
9	POP! PR Jots	21	19	23	6	2	3	72
10	PSFK	27	16	14	0	3	12	72
11	James Governor’s Monkchips	26	12	21	5	1	6	71
12	hyku \| blog	23	15	20	5	2	3	68
13	Ars Technica	18	16	25	2	3	4	67
14	Marketing Pilgrim	28	8	15	6	2	7	67
15	Marketing Nirvana	23	16	15	6	2	4	65
16	a shel of my former self	24	15	15	5	2	4	65
17	Adrants	27	5	19	4	1	8	64
18	People over Process	23	5	23	5	1	5	63
19	What’s Next Blog	25	5	23	1	2	6	63
20	Strumpette	24	15	21	0	1	2	62
21	Online Marketing Blog	28	15	12	0	2	5	62
22	John Battelle’s Searchblog	29	17	0	7	3	5	61
23	Buzz Machine	28	20	0	5	2	5	61
24	Tecosystems	24	4	17	5	3	6	59
25	The Groundswell	26	11	12	6	0	4	58
26	Marketing Begins at Home	20	12	18	4	3	1	58
27	Common Sense PR	20	15	15	3	0	4	57
28	PR meets the WWW	19	12	15	4	1	5	56
29	Russell Davies	25	0	22	0	3	6	56
30	Drew’s Marketing Minute	26	5	17	6	0	1	56

So what does this last list mean? The overwhelming majority of new entrants to this more ‘pure’ Social Media Index are individuals which is probably not surprising given that corporates or even collectives don’t really use Twitter or Facebook … people do. Obviously each platform has different primary functions and some are much more personal (Facebook) than others. But bloggers quite openly use Twitter and Facebook and MySpace to market their blog posts and many blogs these days have widgets cross marketing the individual’s Facebook or Twitter profiles. And the personal and the professional was a line blurred for many of us years ago.

There are of course many platforms that we did not include in this, like MySpace, Jaiku and Pownce and of course this list is very English-language centric and includes none of the local social sites which dominate in countries like Korea and Germany. We may well do this in draft two depending on what people think, but for now we thought we had enough in for the basis of this to be discussed.

Obviously Jonny Bentwood and myself will be delighted to get your feedback. If people think it is worth trying to come to some sort of wider community consensus on this we can look at putting that to a wiki or even hosting some sort of debate at a later date.

Methodology

a) Blogs

Google PageRank

Google PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting to each site. High-quality sites receive a higher PageRank. The ranking uses the actual PageRank as part of its algorithm.

Bloglines Subscribers

Bloglines displays the amount of subscribers each blog has to its feed(s). Subscriber ranges were determined and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Technorati Ranking

Technorati ranking relates the authority of a particular blog (via the number of sites pointing to it). The more link sources referencing your blog, the higher the Technorati ranking. Similar to the Bloglines Subscribers value, and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Content/Frequency/Comments

Scores with strict criteria were assigned to content focus, frequency of posts and number of comments. The combined score was used as part of the algorithm.

Alexa Ranking

Alexa ranks web pages based on usage of millions of people. It is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). Ranks closer to 0 have been assigned a high number that was used as part of the algorithm.

b) Multi-Format

Facebook Ranking

As a multi-format tool, Facebook was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as MySpace could be used at a latter date. The number of friends was determined and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

c) Mini-Updates

Twitter Friends and Followers Ranking

As a multi-format tool, Twitter was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as Pownce could be used at a latter date. The number of friends and followers were combined to determine a total friends and followers score. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Twitter Updates Ranking

The number of twitter updates was determined and each range was assigned a number which was combined with the friends and followers score to give a total that was used as part of the algorithm.

d) Business Cards

LinkedIn Ranking

For Business Cards, LinkedIn was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as Plaxo could be used at a latter date. The number of connections was determined and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

e) Visual

Flickr Ranking

For visual tools, Flickr was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as YouTube could be used at a latter date. The number of pictures about uploaded about an individual or about that person was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

f) Favourites

Digg Score

The number of Digg’s an individual has had was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Del.icio.us Own Library

The number of pages in an individuals own del.icio.us library was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Del.icio.us Others Library

The number of pages of an individuals own postings that have been saved in other users’ del.icio.us library was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Moving forward other tools such as Reddit will be included to make the scoring more complete.

g) Flexible weighting

Each specific social media outlet listed above was given a standard score out of 10. Using a flexible weighting scale it is possible to vary the importance of the different tools available and consequently establish different total scores of individuals web influence. For the table listed above the following weightings were used:

Blogs 30%

Multi-Format (e.g. Facebook) 20%

Mini-Updates (e.g. Twitter) 25%

Business Cards (e.g. LinkedIn) 7%

Visual (e.g. Flickr) 3%

Favourites (e.g. Digg, del.icio.us) 15%

The weighting scale listed above was created through discussions with several key new media gurus. I do not anticipate this weighting scale to be the final standard and welcome everyone’s views as to what this should be.

Future copies of the Social Media Index will allow you to assign your own subjective weightings to the index to establish your own score.

230 comments for this post.

Comment from Todd Van Hoosear on July 17th, 2007 :
Need time to absorb this, but I like the idea in general. I like the flexible weighting. Not sure I’m sold on the categories though—they seem a bit too application-specific and arbitrary. But the ability to weigh them compensates for this quite well. I might recommend different headings for the categories, focused on what you’re actually measuring in that category. For example, it’s not business cards, but “size of rolodex” or something like that… Again, just quick thoughts here.

The real question is how do you get access to all the data you use to measure influence, e.g., facebook friends lists that may be closed unless you yourself are a friend. How are you getting access to this data? Self-reporting, primary research or third-party data?
Comment from james governor on July 17th, 2007 :
cool beans. how do i get on your blogroll? i need to improve my stats. and perhaps you could join the friends of redmonk FB group and twitter/monkchips while you’re at it…

Seriously this is an interesting approach, and obviously its nice to be well represented on a list like this, given there is some, if rough, quantitative elements to this. But key to this is its really about what you put in rather than what you get out. Your metrics appear to reward those that make contributions to social networks, rather than just sucking it up.

I suspect counting del.icio.us via’s is a surprisingly effective influence counter.

Well done for supporting Jonny on this, and encouraging an open debate
Pingback from Web Strategy by Jeremiah » A way to measure influence? See this Social Media Index on July 17th, 2007 :
[…] I like the methodology used by this Social Media Index (one of many that will appear) that uses a variety of rankings from mutiple platforms (not just blogs). While the blog rankings and attributes associated it with it are high, there are other uses, such as one’s LinkedIn network, Twitter network, and how many images are associated with a particular person or brand, and even delicious. […]
Pingback from Pilgrim’s Picks for July 17 | Marketing Pilgrim on July 17th, 2007 :
[…] SixtySecondView has created a Social Media Index to determine which blogs are the most social media savvy. Out of the most popular blogs, Marketing Pilgrim cracks the top 10 thanks to our use of Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us and LinkedIn. There’s only one comment right now. Any bets on the number of “you missed my blog” comments by the end of the day? […]
Pingback from James Governor’s Monkchips » more props from Edelman for kicking ass on Influence 2.0 on July 17th, 2007 :
[…] I guess I couldn’t put it any more clearly. It seems to me these stats (see the third table) are weighted towards those that make a real contribution to a range of social networks. The table rewards givers over takers, which is one reason I am proud to be on there. Measuring the del.icio.us sphere? More, more, more, as my son would say. […]
Comment from Dennis Howlett on July 17th, 2007 :
I understand the methodology and of course it is arguable but the bigger question in my mind is: who is being influenced? Do we know for instance whether there is a clear impact on general buyer behaviours? Do we know much or indeed anything about influence reach? What can we say about niche markets? What about what I term ‘the groupie effect?’

The reason I ask this is that in all the years I worked as a tech journalist, I always knew that the people who were most influenced were the PRs, not buyers. Why? Because readers’ letters were usually faked on most titles including those with ABCs running to 00,000s. Whether that is changing now we have blogs is another matter.
Comment from stephen o'grady on July 17th, 2007 :
“The number of pages of an individuals own postings that have been saved in other users’ del.icio.us library was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.”

interesting - how’d you do this, if i can ask?
Comment from David Brain on July 17th, 2007 :
James,

yes these stats are weighted towards givers rather than takers . . influencers rather than the influenced I guess.
Comment from David Brain on July 17th, 2007 :
Dennis,

yes all good questions. Seems to me this is a bit like peeling an onion in that there is always more to know. My own belief is that it is almost impossible to see where “influence” drives sales, which I guess is part of what you are saying.
Comment from Jonny Bentwood on July 17th, 2007 :
Quote from Todd Van Hoosear

The real question is how do you get access to all the data you use to measure influence, e.g., facebook friends lists that may be closed unless you yourself are a friend. How are you getting access to this data? Self-reporting, primary research or third-party data?

Allow me to answer this for David as I created methodology behind this.

We can only measure the data that is publically available with all data being sourced through our own primary resaerch (i.e. no self reporting or 3rd party data).

With regard to Facebook, I have only included numbers for those people who have made their friend list public. In my opinion if someone aims to use the different social media tools available to promote their voice, they shouldn’t be restricting people from hearing what they have to say.

Again let me reiterate, all this is open to discussion - if the consensus is to change this, then I will happily adapt the methodology.
Comment from Jonny Bentwood on July 17th, 2007 :
Taking the liberty to answer another question…

Quote from Stephen O’Grady

“The number of pages of an individuals own postings that have been saved in other users’ del.icio.us library was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.”
interesting - how’d you do this, if i can ask?

It’s a little complicated but bear with me. To take each point in turn…
del.icio.us - in your case I checked your library: http://del.icio.us/sogrady and then added this total to a search within del.icio.us for other saved posts that include your url. This gave a total del.icio.us figure.
This score was assigned a number depending on the range it was part of (i.e. between 10 and 20, 21 and 30 etc).
A similar process was done for Digg and this score was added to your del.icio.us score which gave you a ‘favourites’ score.
The next process was to standardise each score so that they can be used as comparative measures depending on what weighting scale was used.
Rinse and repeat for other parts of the SMI.
Hope this makes sense but happy to clarify in greater detail should you wish.
Comment from Dennis Howlett on July 17th, 2007 :
Not wishing to diss anyone’s profession I’ve consistently found that when it comes to spend influence, the most powerful voices are those of customers. Analysts and journalists are very low down the pecking order.

The other problem ‘we’ all face right now is that blog influence may be deep in certain places but it sure as heck ain’t wide. Although I detect some change, I suspect we’re still talking to ourselves a lot of the time.
Comment from DJ on July 17th, 2007 :
What about Mashable, that’s definitely in the top 3.
Pingback from The Social Media Index… « The last man in Europe… on July 17th, 2007 :
[…] 17th, 2007 · No Comments A very quick post to flag a great piece of work, that I can claim next to no credit for (the oddword of support and encouragement over a coffee), by my desk neighbour and occasional typing-lackey, Jonny Bentwood. Jonny loves a league table and loves to measure, if it isn’t the precise two scoops needed to make the perfect cup of coffee then it’s peoples influence online. He’s been working hard, with the support of David Brain, to devise the Social Media Index – a first attempt at a methodology to measure true online influence; after all it is about far more than just a blog these days. […]
Comment from David Brain on July 17th, 2007 :
Dennis,

I know what you mean but in some cases and on some points the blogs are on-ramps to mainstream media . . . though mostly they are not. Actually, one point on this exercise might be to add what mainstream media coverage a blog or it’s author gets. Jeff Jarvis and Steve Rubel are high on that and I guess therefore influential in the old world as well as the new.
Comment from stephen o'grady on July 17th, 2007 :
ah, i see. i’d thought you’d magically solved the whole domain problem in tracking del.icio.us mentions. in other words, for all of us, that’s just a partial list in that it doesn’t track specific del.icio.us or digg mentions for items on the respective domains, so that specific pieces like this:

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2007/07/05/google_apps_migration/

aren’t necessarily tracked - just the parent domain. and even there, it could suffer from deltas between, say, redmonk.com/sogrady and www.redmonk.com/sogrady.

but i don’t have a solution to that problem either, and it certainly applies to all of us equally, so kudos.

v interesting list.
Comment from Robert Scoble on July 17th, 2007 :
In my experience Facebook is replacing LinkedIn as the new business card. So, having your phone number and email address available on Facebook should count as being a business card.
Pingback from Broadening the measures of online influence at NevilleHobson.com on July 17th, 2007 :
[…] In a highly detailed post, Edelman’s David Brain explains the Social Media Index, a new methodology which embraces emerging platforms like Facebook and Twitter as part of the means to gauge influence: […]
Comment from david brain on July 17th, 2007 :
I can see that for you Robert and for the people you have as friends, but many of mine are still in the old world and I’m stuck with both… that said, Facebook is taking increasing amounts of my email traffic.
Pingback from The Social Media Index–Measuring Across Multiple Platforms « girl from the south on July 17th, 2007 :
[…] Edelman Europe at SixtySecondView took a stab at this new dilemma: When people talked about on-line influence in the past they were often referring to bloggers and Technorati scores, though obviously influence was always more complicated than that. But now with the increasing mass adoption of Twitter and Facebook and favourites listings like Digg and Del.icio.us things have moved on. Bloggers Twitter and Facebookers Dig. Many of us are multi-platform users and so our online ‘footprint’ is much more dispersed. […]
Pingback from James Governor’s Monkchips » links for 2007-07-17 on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] » Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics holy fsck I do rather well on this study. Edelman is going Influence 2.0 tastic at the moment. great to see Jonny getting corporate attention from Steve Brain on this. I am well placed on the third list! (tags: edelman influence2.0) […]
Comment from Jeffrey Treem on July 18th, 2007 :
I think this index will spark a great discussion; thanks for putting it together. A few thoughts:

1. Often you are dealing with the same audience across the non-blogging platforms. In other words, the same people who subscribe to Scoble’s blog also get his twitter feed and are his friend on facebook. This means that his footprint is not necessarily wider, just arguably deeper - which may or may not be meaningful.

2. I fear you are falling into the trap of equating reach with influence. There are several fundamental questions that this index fails to address:
Who are these people reaching?
What is their content addressing?
What are they influencing?

Romenesko is very influential in the journalist community, but no so much in terms of fashion. I might trust Steve Rubel when it comes to new media, but his restaurant recommendation likely doesn’t mean much to me. Any one of these people may get me to look up a product on Amazon, but if the user reviews there are terrible, will I still buy the product?

The list above is loaded with a bunch of tech and communications media platforms, but I don’t think they are driving the majority of decisions about what to buy, who to vote for or what to go and see.

Many of these comparisons are apples and oranges. Subsequent indexes may be better informed by defining communities and the type of influence being examined.

3. The index is biased toward individuals as organizations are less likely to be active in social networking based applications (then again, social media in general is biased toward individuals who are free from the constraints of organizations). Notice how Direct2Dell, Jonathan’s Blog and Romenesko (Poynter) drop further and further on each index. Yet the index fails to account for something like Dell’s Community Forum or their Second Life presence.

The index certainly calls attention to the fact that blogs are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of social media, but I feel the idea of influence requires a deeper understand of what drives decision making at the user level - let’s not give too much credit to those talking the loudest, or most often. Participation in the conversation is certainly meaningful - but in what ways?

(full disclosure: I work for Edelman in Chicago)
Comment from Susan F. Heywood on July 18th, 2007 :
The third and more diverse Social Media ranking seems to be less likely to be skewed by a huge score in one area, for instance, a huge number of LinkedIn contacts. Given the networking skills behind MicroPersuasion, it’s not surprising that it tops each list. (You may have the most physical business cards, too!)

Overlap would be interesting to try to calculate. Of the blogs and sites listed, I know that I personally would count double or triple on some (LinkedIn, Blog subscriber and Twitter, for instance) and would be counted on more than one on the list. A measure of unique individuals would be helpful, as would an average of the number of methods by which a user connects with a site.

Another key metric that could be useful would be feed subscription and aggregation data definable by service or tags.

As mentioned, adding sites like MySpace, del.icio.us, Gather and Squidoo may have a significant impact on any of these index calculations, as well as raise questions of definition—Is a MySpace or Yahoo! 360 blog a blog or an element of the platform? Where would a Twitter read on a blog widget fall? (Although Neilsen’s new metrics may make this easier to quantify.)

Most important, who are those influenced? Defining the scope of influence that the scores represent in the above social media index group would, I suspect yield numerous profiles of PR, marketing and tech folks. To what extent are we talking with each other? (I’ve noticed quite a bit of buzz within this community about these lists.)

Where might a blog like TMZ, which is arguably quite influential in entertainment, fall?

The readers of top blogs in the social media index may not be an attractive target segment for consumer products marketers, for instance, but the same marketers might be extremely interested in readers of the TMZ blog.

To the extent that social media can be defined as an interest group, as well as describe the modes of communications those in the group use, this methodology could be especially valuable applied to various influence segments and vertical markets to create vertical indices.

My thought is that to do this in a way that reflects authentic influence will require more analysis of the characteristics of the contacts and readers, and, ideally will measure elements that difficult for spammers to exploit.

Thanks for putting this together. It raises lots of interesting thoughts about the scope of social media and its influence on thoughts and behavior.
Pingback from Well, it looks like sh!t is going to hit the b’sphere fan | WinExtra on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] Anyway back to this discussion going on. apparently Steve Rubel; a very smart man by some folks opinion, has come up with an idea for a new metric for us to measure influencer by so we can create a new A-List and the such. In a post called Crowdsourcing a New System for Measuring Influence Steve outlines the idea of this new metric that is being called Social Media Index and is laid out in full on SixtySecondReview. […]
Pingback from BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Measuring influence on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] His colleague David Brain then takes up the challenge and tries to come up with a new measurement taking into account weighted activity and popularity on blogs, Twitter and company, Facebook, Del.icio.us and company, and more. […]
Comment from Prokofy Neva on July 18th, 2007 :
Well make a widget or a thingie that does all this culling and parsing of my stats on all those platforms automatically for me, so I can see how I come out, then I’ll let you know : )

It sounds horribly corporativist and rigged so far, however because so many of these social media thingies are highly subjective, twitter might be down, somebody joins jaiku or never comes back or goes to Pownce, oops, there wonderful big post and friend stats on Twitter go down the tube. Perhaps if there was a cumulative footprint over 90 days…somehow, it just isn’t feeling right, using some of the gamed and rigged internal metrics of these silly social media things to then arrive at an ostensibly more objective metric for SMI.
Comment from stephenzhai on July 18th, 2007 :
Well, it’s a good idear and a good start. I wonder if technorati or google will change their measure standard accordingly? It seems that they should do it long long before. Did you guys apply for a patent or something?
What about if they follow your guys’ idear, and make a little change, and use another different name instead of SMI?
Pingback from Did I just get on the Social Media Index? | A Top 30 Listing « Marketing Nirvana by Mario Sundar on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] Check out the entire post where David Brain (President and CEO, Edelman Europe) describes the rationale behind the research. […]
Trackback from PR 2.0 on July 18th, 2007 :
Social Media Index

Toplisten sind ja immer so eine Sache - und wir haben im vergangenen Jahr mehr als einmal schlechte Erfahrungen damit gemacht. Toplisten sind vor allem dann doof, wenn man eine einzige Quelle bzw. einen einzigen Indikator zugrunde legt.

Unsere Kolle…
Pingback from Social Media Index « Vincos Blog on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] Partendo da questa constatazione David Brain, Presidente e CEO di Edelman Europa, ha proposto una metodologia per misurare la propensione sociale degli utenti della rete ed il loro grado d’influenza cross-mediale. Il Social Media Index individua 6 categorie di misurazione per ogni persona, attribuendo un voto pesato per riflettere il grado d’influenza di quel media, in quella determinata nazione. […]
Pingback from The Rosemont Loving on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] David Brain Jonny Bentwood Steve Rubel Neville Hobson PSFK […]
Pingback from GREENblog on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] Hats off to David Brain at Sixty Second View and Edleman’s attempt to create a Social Media Index that goes beyond the simple measurement of blogs. David and his team have attempted to take in the spaces that really make social media rock – like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Del.iciu.os. They are making some pretty broad assumptions but given that measuring the influence of social media is a bit like trying to eat soup with a fork – they have done a pretty good job. Read more here. […]
Pingback from Social Media Index « ryan moede :: social media on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] 18th, 2007 · No Comments Sixtysecondview is a experimenting with a new way to measure online influence. Tracking the numberof links was fine for a time, but that couldn’t account for the ideas and influence taking shape through Twitter, Del.icio.us or Digg. […]
Pingback from Time for a new PageRank? | terrainnova.org on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] So some people have been trying to think of a more encompassing proprietary PageRank replacement (or I should say upgrade). Others suggest that a summit (!) is necessary to decide on open standards for measuring influence. I’d go with openness any time of the day, but at the same time it has to be robust and agile enough to work - something a central authority provides. Other than that openness is not that much of an issue as the ‘game’ is so complex that even if you were to know the exact algorithm by which popularity is measured there’s only so much you can do to alter the market - something like the stock exchange. […]
Comment from David Brain on July 18th, 2007 :
Jeff, you make some very good points.

I agree that we may often be measuring a deeper rather than a wider score when the same person reads Scoble on Twitter and on his blog. It’s similar in the off-line world too when we talk about readership reach for magazines and newspapers and you sometimes end up with a figure that is higher than the population of the country in which they are published. Possibly, repetition is useful, but I suspect that this is one of the areas where measuring in this way comes up against a hard stop as I fear we will never be able to detect multiple “readers” of Scoble (for example) across platform.

I also agree that reach is not influence. Perhaps that would be the next step, though it would be good to hear how you think we might measure it.

Thanks for your comments and interest . .and watch this space for the next version.
Comment from David Brain on July 18th, 2007 :
Susan Heywood.

Wow, all great thoughts thank-you. Difficlut to argue with any of them really. i definitely think that next iteration needs to offer a more segmented approach and I am stumped on how to siphon out the overlap issue.

Thanks for this …all taken into consideration for next version.
Comment from David Brain on July 18th, 2007 :
Profky Neva.

Great thought on the ninety day (or period of time) footprint. That might even out some of the bumps.

Thanks for that.
Comment from Lauren Vargas on July 18th, 2007 :
Where is the human element? This study confirms that many are so engrossed in the tools and popularity contests versus developing relationships. My virtual “rolodex” is not be pages long because I believe in the power of direct communication — Please note this is not anti-technology because I am a geek. Awareness does not mean anything. Action is everything. Is the content useful and acted upon?
Comment from David Brain on July 18th, 2007 :
Stephenzhai,

No patents unfortunately. Any suggestions for a different name?
Comment from David Brain on July 18th, 2007 :
Lauren I think that is at the heart of this but what we have tried to do is take one big value judegement (what is the social media influence of person X) and break it down into smaller chunks which are also (I admit) value judgements. And you are right, this dos pose problems in terms of awareness versus influence and on that I have no answer but I suspect no-one does. If you are focused on the purity of the relationship then this sort of output model will never satisfy I suspect. Any suggestions on measuring relationships? there is a body of work out there looking at that by the way, but not about on-line relationships.
Comment from Rachel Clarke on July 18th, 2007 :
This so ties into some thinking I’ve being doing on niche influencers. For me, it gives a baseline on how to compare influencers within a category. None of the people listed above would feature on much of the stuff that I do, but I could use the process to look at the most influential in knitting or cooking or beauty etc.

Overlaying it needs to be a way of measuring the impact, if you are using it in a marketing sense. looking at reference since the network before and after any effort is necessary - which would then have to feed into the influence measure.
Comment from David Brain on July 18th, 2007 :
Yes we are of the view that it becomes more useful the more niche or sectoraly it is used as the comparisons become more valid.
Comment from Jonny Bentwood on July 18th, 2007 :
Hi Rachael

You are dead right. Once the methodology is agreed (which is the hard part) the SMI can be applied to any group of people.

One thing I am continually struggling to find an answer to is how to measure the importance of the friends you have (for example in twitter) compared to the number.

For example, I would be far more influential if I only had 2 friends listed but they were CEOs of Fortune 100 companies compared to 100’s but all university mates.

Google Rank provides this in one way but unfortunately only in one medium - perhaps the next step is to analyse the profile of the people in a list and score them too. This raises even more concerns but maybe this suggestion should be thrown into the ring with all the other comments so that the community can help forge a methodology that everyone (or most people) can agree with.
Pingback from Movie Marketing Madness » Friends of MMM Update: 7/16/07 on July 18th, 2007 :
[…] I’m proud of the many people I know who made the “Social Media Index” list put together by Edelman Europe President David Brain. […]
Pingback from links for 2007-07-18 on July 19th, 2007 :
[…] » Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics David Brain on the methodology used in calculating his influence metric (tags: socialmedia metrics influence marketing) […]
Pingback from Moderne-Unternehmenskommunikation.de » Social Media Index-Diskussion plus ein Beitrag dazu on July 19th, 2007 :
[…] “Social Media Index” von David Brain […]
Comment from David on July 19th, 2007 :
IMO, this is a very impressive first step in what will surely be one of the most ambitious initiatives that the web has seen to date. However, I would suggest that for the next iteration, you guys might want to consider reaching out to academic researchers, some of whom have been involved in social network analysis for many years (esp. the collective dynamics group at Columbia University in New York).

I would probably state FWIW that it might be problematic to conflate, as others have written above, awareness with influence. Furthermore, how do you account for the effects of the content itself? _Regular_ blog reading is, according to most of the studies we’ve produced, by no means a mainstream activity, although there appears to be a tremendous variance in terms of what kind of content generates the most apparent awareness (tech bloggers come to mind, but we could get much more specific).

Similarly, despite all appearances to the contrary, the direct reach of bloggers tends to be pretty limited, even with pingbacks etc, possibly unless the blogger also appears in a newspaper or on television. Then again, a VC may make decisions to invest in a given company based in part upon blogger opinions that are not widely read, sparking the company’s growth into a powerhouse (i.e. low awareness yielding high influence).

In other words, what I am trying to get across is that there are a spectacularly large number of variables to capture well before you consider off-line activity. Moreover it is very difficult to quantify the effects of content (partly because of emotional factors) unless it is tied to a very specific action or “success event” such as the purchase of a product.

The points above aside, I think that your approach is in general quite sound and marks a major first step in what may be a very long journey indeed.

Best,
David
Pingback from Social Media Index; een nieuw model om de invloed binnen buzz te meten at BuzzResearch on July 19th, 2007 :
[…] Het PR bureau Edelman heeft op het Sixtysecondview blog een voorstel gedaan voor een manier om de invloed van verschillende blogs/mensen binnen de buzz te meten. […]
Pingback from Social Media Index - A Blunt Instrument, but Better than None on July 19th, 2007 :
[…] Although the Social Media Index may be a blunt instrument for measuring which bloggers have greater influence across a range of social media tools, it’s interesting to see the various tendrils of my online presence being used to calculate my involvement across platforms. […]
Comment from David Brain on July 19th, 2007 :
David (July 19),

Thank-you very much for such a long and thoughtful piece. You are right on so much of this and the semantics of the issue are important too. I think inviting academics to the next stage s a great idea and I have noted the suggested names. Thanks again.
Pingback from Brand Game » Pop life, everybody needs a thrill… on July 19th, 2007 :
[…] Ainda um pouco a ver com o que falamos há uns dias, sobre a existência (e o papel) de (super)influenciadores nas redes sociais, novos modelos estão sendo avaliados para indexar autoridade na web. A grande discussão é se o modelo da Technorati (e do PageRank, diga-se de passagem) baseado em links captura a influência de um indivíduo quando tantas outras formas de influenciar estão aí disponíveis. Recomendo a leitura desse post da galera da Edelmann mostrando comparações de rankings quando redes sociais e outras atividades (como postar fotos no Flickr) entram na avaliação. […]
Pingback from Power Shift » Influence… lets take it up a notch on July 19th, 2007 :
[…] It’s been an interesting few days in the world of social media measurement. While much of the focus over the last few years in online influence measures has been dedicated to link analysis in the blogosphere… some are starting to question this technique. Steve Rubel and team at Edelman have gone so far as to say, “The practice of measuring online influence by links is truly dead“. […]
Pingback from Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)? - Internet Insider Report on July 19th, 2007 :
[…] David Brain, CEO and President of Edelman Europe, is working on a formula for a social media index, the likes of which we may see embraced by Google and other search engines in the future. […]
Pingback from links for 2007-07-19 on July 20th, 2007 :
[…] » Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics David Bain’s post on measuring online influencers, and factoring in presence and social networking tools. Plenty of comments to this post (tags: SocialMedia Influencers) […]
Pingback from carlo beccaria - blog / links for 2007-07-20 on July 20th, 2007 :
[…] » Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics (tags: metrics blogging social) […]
Pingback from Mesuring your Social Media Footprint at pixelblog on July 20th, 2007 :
[…] Sixty Second View has attempted to measure your social media footprint via the Social Media Index and it’s another good effort with some reasonable assumptions. Whilst there’s no golden bullet at present - much like search - there’s a set of criteria of sorts to measure against and then the 5% that’s human perception. […]
Trackback from isedb.com on July 20th, 2007 :
Social Media Index

The CEO of Edelman Europe has posted their analysis of the top 30 influential social media oriented blogs. In the final analysis three of the 30 blogs were search marketing oriented: Marketing Pilgrim, Online Marketing Blog and John Battelle’s Search…
Trackback from Anonymous on July 20th, 2007 :
SEM Blogs in Edelman’s Social Media Index

The CEO of Edelman Europe has posted their analysis of the top 30 influential social media oriented blogs. In the final analysis three of the 30 blogs were search marketing oriented: - Marketing Pilgrim
- Online Marketing Blog
- John Battelle’s Sear…
Pingback from Marketing Technology : What is influence anyway? on July 20th, 2007 :
[…] Edelman’s attempts to create a methodology for measuring social media influence flashed past my RSS reader yesterday. Only today when someone asked what I thought about it did I take a look in more detail. Here’s my take: […]
Pingback from PRobecast 25: Social Media PR, Grammar Vandal, and more « Gischeleman’s Blog on July 20th, 2007 :
[…] “Social Media Influence” index: Do we need one? Is it useful? Should we create one that shows Tech PR Gems to be the most influential blog? […]
Pingback from Get Me, I’m Givin’ Out Wings on July 20th, 2007 :
[…] Edelman’s attempts to measure social media influence by counting ‘connections’ against ‘activity’ is like me saying I’m a tissue owner because I wipe my nose frequently (you can insert another analogy here, if you wish). Just because one Twitter’s about everything they do from the time they get up, or links to everything they’ve read during the day, or comments everywhere or just Pownce’s on everything, doesn’t mean they really have all that much influence day-to-day. ”I am” - I just Twittered. […]
Pingback from technophobe-anonyme.com » Blog Archive » Death on the Hamster Wheel on July 21st, 2007 :
[…] Measuring suck-cess, I guess. Thanks to Tom Shugart for noting this in facebook (and to Earnestine for noting it in another context). […]
Pingback from Whats the CPM equivalent of Web2.0? at fo.unta.in ! on July 21st, 2007 :
[…] I have written before about Metrics and how Pageviews are dead. Through Micropersuasion, I read about this new attempt to measure attention online. What we have tried to do is add some new ways of measuring influence via platforms like Twitter and Facebook to blog scores. This is definitely adding apples to oranges we admit. So for example, we are placing a score for Facebook depending on the number of friends someone has. For Twitter, it is the number of friends, followers and updates. And if that is not insulting enough, we are then coming to a comparative weighting of someone’s Facebook score against their Twitter and blogging score. And the most sinful step is of course the final one where we have added those scores together and come up with a total Social Media Index. Which is an A list or a league table by another name I suppose. But we are not claiming it is definitive (how can it be with as many value judgements as I just confessed too) and we’re not entirely sure if the thesis itself will stand up. What we hope to do by this is to contribute to the debate and (and if possible) come to a community view of how you look at this. […]
Pingback from Get me off this crazy thing! -- Chip’s Quips on July 21st, 2007 :
[…] Kent was responding to Edelman’s new Social Media index, which seeks to rank authority by factoring in the use of non-blog social media in addition to the traditional monitoring of blog linkage. Kent points out that this new score is still more a measure of popularity than of authority, and seems to say that Technorati does a good enough job at that already. […]
Trackback from PR2Peer on July 22nd, 2007 :
Mesurer l’influence des médias sociaux

Ci-dessous le premier billet d’un opus composé de … deux billets sur le thème de la mesure de l’influence des médias sociaux. Pour commencer, un rappel du cadre général de la mesure de l’influence des médias (sous un angle très
Pingback from Social Media Index « Mediapsychologie.nl on July 23rd, 2007 :
[…] Social Media Index 23 07 2007 PR-bureau Edelman doet op haar sixtysecondsview blog een voorstel voor een methode om dit te ranken: een ‘Social Media Index’. Een interessant idee. […]
Pingback from renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll » Blog Archive » Links for 2007-07-20 [del.icio.us] on July 23rd, 2007 :
[…] » Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics […]
Comment from Jason Preston on July 23rd, 2007 :
I’m curious about the Digg score…does the “number of Digg’s an individual has” refer to the number of times a person’s submitted links have been dugg, or to the number of items they’ve voted on themselves, or the number of items they’ve submitted to the service, regardless of whether or not they land on the front page? Or none of the above?
Comment from Jonny Bentwood on July 24th, 2007 :
Hi Jason

Regarding Digg, the numbers are calculated by analysing how often a particular domain has had it’s pages ‘digged’. (i.e. this applies to every page - not just the front page).

In addition, Digg works by only allowing one user to digg a specific page.

The Digg score does not include how many times a user has submitted a digg.

Hope this clarifies things for you.

Jonny
Pingback from Il Social Media Index e l’autorevolezza dei blogger « MediaMeter on July 24th, 2007 :
[…] Di recente, David Brain, Presidente e CEO di Edelman Europa, ha presentato il Social Media Index, un nuovo indice per valutare l’influenza dei blog. Il Social Media Index individua sei sezioni di misurazione per ogni persona, attribuendo un voto pesato, capace di riflettere il grado d’influenza di quel media. Le sei sezioni sono: […]
Comment from Jennifer Mattern on July 25th, 2007 :
I have to say, I’m extremely disappointed in this post, and the fact that so little research has apparently gone into this project to determine whether it would be even vaguely valid. If it shows anything, it’s that the people behind it really still understand very little about social media tools, other than how they benefit them directly. I find it so disappointing, because I work not only on the PR side of things, but also the tech end through running around 2 dozen sites of my own on top of my clients predominantly being webmasters and online entrepreneurs (several at the top of their fields, including online communities). Here are some of the fundamental faults with this idea (the same shared by pretty much every other ranking system in existence for blogs):

1. Facebook - Using Facebook doesn’t demonstrate influence in the slightest. Anyway can start an account, and add random users as friends. It doesn’t mean they actively use the account or exercise any influence over them. On top of it, Facebook isn’t valid for all niches by a long shot, and with Myspace cracking down heavily on auto-friend-adder bots, it leaves Facebook and the other social networks more open to the social media spammers (who can generate tens of thousands of friends quickly, but with no real interest in what they have to say). Facebook being more popular perhaps in Europe is fine, but that only makes it valid (but even that not really) if you’re talking about influence with a European audience, and nothing wider.

2. Twitter - Twitter’s really such a joke that I’m absolutely shocked to see it here. It’s actually discouraged quite aggressively in the blogging community, as a big contributer “blog clutter.”

3. Even the mention of Digg and Del.icio.us is amusing. The same goes for things like Technorati. If the PR community actually paid attention, they’d know that these once-useful tools are rendered worthless in gauging popularity with the overwhelming abuse that grows daily. You have paid Diggs, favorite and bookmark exchanges to improve rankings, etc. It’s sad, but it’s a reality in Internet marketing and SEO efforts, and it’s time to stop ignoring it.

4. Where are you pulling your inbound link count from?? Google, Yahoo!, and MSN can’t even come close to the same estimates (often by the thousands), so there’s no real authority source to pull this info from. Even if you went by Google’s standards because of their market share, you run into the issue that they choose to ignore and devalue certain backlinks for the purposes of their own ranking algorithms… which has nothing whatsoever to do with overall popularity and influence.

5. Google Pagerank - Obviously the PR community missed the Web memo that PageRank means almost nothing unless you’re selling backlinks on a website based on their ability to pass link juice (which Google actively discourages and is trying to weed out). It’s also incredibly easy to manipulate, and changes radically based on algorithm changes at Google’s whim… not with necessarily with changing influence. You also mentioned backlinks separately in your post. If you’re intending to count them both separately, you’re double-counting the same information, as incoming links are the driving factor behind Pagerank.

6. Content frequency tells you pretty much nothing, if you can’t vouch for content quality at the same time (and there really isn’t a way to do that… hence the issue with the entire ranking system really). Using it as a standard means that splogs have a better shot in that area than legitimate blogs.

7. Alexa - I’m utterly amazed that there’s still a living soul that gives any value to an Alexa rank. Again, it shows how out of touch the originators are with the tech side of the equation. Alexa rankings are the most easily manipulated ranking in existence, through simple URL redirects, autosurfing, and browsing your own pages. It’s reliance on the Alexa toolbar means most traffic to a site isn’t even factored into the equation, which is why Alexa has a tendency to be dominated by sites aimed at tech geeks and early adopter-types.

8. LinkedIn - If you’re only evaluating business-oriented blogs, this might not completely suck, but it’s also not used widely enough yet (even assuming no manipulation, which is highly unlikely) to justify using it as a yardstick to measure influence.

The most fundamental problem that you’re missing with this social media index is that you’re making a faulty correlation between social media and a blog’s influence, while simultaneously ignoring other extremely strong factors.

Frankly, a blog’s influence depends entirely on knowing one’s target market and what tools are likely to influence them. Your system can’t account for the fact that these tools simply don’t work all markets in even close to the same way.

You’re also ignoring things like paid advertising (increasingly popular for driving targeted traffic to content-oriented sites like blogs). You ignore it because it doesn’t fall within your limited scope of social media. Yet it leads to more targeted traffic than a lot of these other sources, and therefore traffic more easily influenced by the blogger. It’s just one example of why you can’t equate a social media “score” to the influence a blog has.

You also ignore a variety of other factors that can equate to influence, such as media coverage of the blog, interviews done with the blogger, the blogger’s level of communication in non-typical social media environments like forums and comments on related blogs, etc. It all matters. But it’s not all something you can measure in a hands-off, automatic way, with info plugged into an equation. I don’t blame you for not including these things, because of the sheer work that would be involved. But then please don’t claim to be offering an even slightly honest listing of blogs by their level of influence.

All you really ended up with is yet another list touting the same “top” bloggers (some deserving; some not so much), which in turn will simply drive even more traffic and exposure their way, showing quite directly that influence can be decided by enormously more than social media.
Comment from Nicholas Byrne on July 25th, 2007 :
Glad to see that there is at least one other person in the world that can see this for what it is… nice work Jennifer…

This is not a rank of influence it is a rank of how often certain individuals open their mouths. There is no quality score what-so-ever, there are no indicators as to what audience this stuff is reaching (if any) and the weighting is an absolute joke. Did any thought go into it or were numbers just randomly plucked from thin air? This is just an indicator of how much noise these people are introducing to an already overly congested media with no indication as to what effect this noise is having.

The appalling lack of understanding as to how social media works that is demonstrated here is shocking. Aside from the fact that having 4400+ friends on facebook is just ridiculous (it is about two-way interaction, does anyone in the world have the time to interact with over four thousand people?), the egotistical use of the word ‘followers’ instead of friends further demonstrates the misuse of the medium… these guys are trying to turn Facebook into blogs. They clearly do not get how New Media and Social Media are being used by the general public and instead are using the excuse of bringing much needed measurement and understanding of the internets impact as part of the marketing mix to blow their own trumpets within their existing sphere of influence.

I would be more angry about this sorry excuse of a methodology potentially damaging the industry of reputation management but thankfully it is so poor that the vast majority of people will see it for what it is, a cheap publicity stunt by Edelman.
Comment from David Brain on July 25th, 2007 :
Jennifer and Nicolas I am sorry we disappointed. You make many good points, some of which have been made by other commentators and which we are taking on-board. The key one of these I think was my use of the word “influence” when as you rightly point out much of what we were ‘measuring’ was reach. However, you both talk as if we put this up as some sort of definitive view rather than a “first bash”. In fact, I don’t think we could have been less definitive and more apologetic for the approach then we were in my post. We talk about “presumption” and adding “apples and oranges” and the “insult” of our method of comparative weighting. And we expressly said this was not about the list produced but about how we talk about multi-platform use. We even said “we are not sure this will stand up”. And we expressly asked for input and feedback (and again thanks for yours) so I hope this makes you a little less “angry”.
Comment from Jennifer Mattern on July 25th, 2007 :
It’s not so much a matter of being “angry” as being shocked that people in the PR industry, especially at Edelman’s level, are this far behind in understanding what these tools really are, how they really work, and how they’re really being used. There seems to be this assumption that these tools are actually being used as they may have been originally intended by their creators, but that simply isn’t the case. Unless you’re working down in the trenches with the webmasters and online entrepreneurs creating and using these kinds of platforms, and not just jumping on them based on their own buzz after the masses are already ahead of the game, chances are that you’re clueless (not you personally; speaking generally regarding members of this industry).

The post was definitely extremely disappointing, because obviously thought went into it, and people thought they were doing it “right,” while missing a heck of a lot. The comments were / are definitely meant to be constructive, and perhaps a bit of a reality check. Support for something like this doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea… it does however demonstrate a more widespread naivety that’s a bit disturbing.

Hopefully Edelman takes the issues to heart and either comes up with a more legitimate ranking model or drops it, so as not to become yet another false source of rankings in the blogosphere seeming to say only that “bigger is better.” At least it would all be worthwhile if at least a few readers here listen to the comments from their colleagues and take this as a stepping stone to finally educating themselves a bit more on the world of social media… and not just from the already completely “lost” PR community.
Pingback from Google and Yahoo enter social media with Socialstream and Mosh « Technobabble 2.0 on July 25th, 2007 :
[…] Google and Yahoo enter social media with Socialstream and Mosh 25Jul07 The dynamic world of social media is fascinating me at the moment. It seems that not a day goes by without a new entrant to the market, a debate regarding whether x is better than y or a huge discussion trying to sort out a way of calculating who is really important in the online world. […]
Comment from David Brain on July 25th, 2007 :
Jennifer,

We are taking the comments to heart and will be having another go in some form soon, though I personally believe this will be more in the area of getting a view of reach or footprint rather than ‘influence’ which I think is too big a claim for pretty much any mechanical method (though Peter Hirshberg of Technorati is pretty compelling on why their system can do this). And ultimately of course, the best system is going to be a massively blunt instrument and out of date as soon as published (are we not always in beta?). The “angry” quote was referring to Nicholas the subsequent comment to yours by the way.
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Pingback from Search Marketing Sage » Blog Archive » What’s going on with Link Authority??? on July 26th, 2007 :
[…] Interestingly, Jason refers to David Brain who has been working on a new way for SEs to measure the popularity of a site that includes: content, inbound links, page update frequency etc… basically how active a site is and how many people are visiting, linking, time spent on the site, commenting and so on. Seems like a good idea to me. After all, isn’t that a more true picture of a website’s popularity? Then again, not every site has visible comments and not every site is the same as far as time to be spent on it. In this day and age of SEO, a company who wants ranking and a competitive edge better be on top of what is going on trend-wise. […]
Comment from Danny Sullivan on July 27th, 2007 :
We’re still a new site, but I dunno, we’ve felt kind of influential.

Why don’t you skip all the bizarre metrics? You’re a PR company. Just use your own internal data of what impact mentions on the blogs you monitor have.
Pingback from // JPZ » Social Media Index sixtysecondview on July 27th, 2007 :
[…] Social Media Index sixtysecondview […]
Pingback from » Edelman’s Social Media Index is Currently Useless Via Marketing Conversation - New Marketing and Social Media by Abraham Harrison LLC on July 27th, 2007 :
[…] I think I know what the gang at Edelman are up to with their Social Media Index. I fancy they’re just showing us the framework, the point zero, the point-of-departure. Right now it’s useless shit you already knew. But who knows… it’s not finished yet. […]
Pingback from Influence isn’t easy « Heather Yaxley - Greenbanana views of public relations and more on July 30th, 2007 :
[…] One of the problems I have with the Social Media Index developed and promoted by Edelman is in this respect. Whilst admitting that its methodology is flawed, it still attempts to evaluate online influence on the basis of usage of various social media platforms. The linkage here between what is being measured and the method to do it is missing - which David Brain admits in the comment discussion. […]
Pingback from Fad Marketing » Edelman’s Social Media Index on July 30th, 2007 :
[…] Edelman’s Social Media Index Edelman, a major international PR firm, has started working on a Social Media Index project, with the intention of ranking blogs. Personally, the way it’s laid out at this point would make for a pretty useless tool in my opinion, and I’ve detailed why I think so on my PR blog recently. […]
Comment from Marianina Chaplin on July 30th, 2007 :
Interesting that this kind of debate is going on in the broader corporate world but I would have to agree with a few of the skeptics that is all about “noise” (reach to put it kindly) rather than “true influence”. The very nature of social media means that an influential network is not determined by the number of friend links - as is very easy to end up with thousands of friends and spammer adder-ons - so this metric is fundamentally flawed. I would be interested in an influence metric which would assess the number of comments on a site (even if these are inflated by the blog owner replying back to posts or trackbacks). I recently posted about this on my blog because for example MIT are doing some really interesting work uwing a tool to measure the true influence of social media site visitors - which if combined with feed subscriptions, number of comments on blog and technorati rankings (although again technorati is also fundamentally flawed - ie links on one’s own site can influence one own’s rankings). At least this is provoking a broad debate though
My thoughts are here in more detail if anyone is interested:
http://marianina.com/blog/2007/07/02/social-networking-analysis-meets-web-analytics-meets-marketing-effectiveness/
Trackback from PR2Peer on July 31st, 2007 :
Mesurer l’influence des médias sociaux (2)

Pour reprendre le fil de mon propos sur l’influence des médias sociaux et revenir ainsi sur le “social media index” proposé par David Brain, directeur général de Edelman Europe, je crois utile de résumer en quelques mots la philosophie de cet i…
Pingback from Social Media Index « Small business PR and marketing on July 31st, 2007 :
[…] Media Index 31 July 2007 Posted by Catriona Pollard in Resources. trackback Edelman’s Eurpoean CEO, David Brian has summarised an interesting attempt to measuresocial media via what they call the “Social Media Index“. This is an attempt at opening a debate about how to rank social media. […]
Pingback from Social Media Index on July 31st, 2007 :
[…] http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=325 […]
Pingback from Technorati: where’s the innovation? « ‘Cross The Breeze on July 31st, 2007 :
[…] Overall, authority and influence measurement fascinates me and I can only applaud several exercises being done by Forrester’s Peter Kim, Edelman’s David Brain (and team), … hopefully Technorati innovates in this spaces. […]
Pingback from St. Paul’s Reach » Links - Social media measurement on August 1st, 2007 :
[…] SixtySecondView: Edelman’s Social media index […]
Pingback from The Effectiveness of Blogs on August 2nd, 2007 :
[…] This topic of blog impact has been a hot one, particularly of late. The Friendly Ghost led me over to Onalytica’s Blog discussion over the measuring of influence. There is an interesting list there of the most ‘influential’ marketing blogs (shame on me for not making the list, maybe next year). At the same time we have Edelman London’s Social Media Index, the Power 150 (where I need to update my URL), and more. […]
Pingback from PR’s obsession with rankings « First Person PR on August 2nd, 2007 :
[…] One more controversial ranking comes from Edelman’s European office, and is their take on ranking the influencers of the blogosphere. Dubbed the Social Media Index, it looks at 30 blogs, from media sites like TechCrunch and Search Engine Watch to PR/Marketing blogs like Logic+Emotion, and even direct2dell. The Index measures each blog’s “influence” based on their Facebook ranking, Twittering activity, and even the number of contacts on LinkedIn. […]
Pingback from » Social Media Index 2 sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics on August 3rd, 2007 :
[…] Well that post surely hit a nerve. At time of writing we’ve had 91 comments for which I am very thankful. There seems to be as much interest in measuring reach/impact/footprint/influence (delete as you see fit) as there is divergent views of how you do it. I guess that was largely to be expected. Jonny Bentwood and myself have given our initial feedback to pretty much all the comments we received and I’m not proposing to go over them again here. But what are we proposing to do? We (Jonny, Steve Rubel, Rick Murray and myself) are planning an old fashioned physical meeting where we sit down with a group of people with expertise and experience to take this thing to the next stage. Hopefully that group will include some of those who commented, some with specific measurement and competitive intelligence experience both as individuals and from organisations and maybe some academics. I am totally convinced that we will only peel back the next skin of the onion and probably again upset as many people as we enthuse, but that seems to go with the territory. I’m not sure there will ever be an ‘industry standard’ for this sort of thing in the sense that all or even most people will agree with any one approach. But for our business at least we are going to move it on a stage. The meeting will be as soon as we can organise it (probably in about a month) and probably in New York. As we get near to it I will publish an agenda for further comment and after the meeting a report on the discussions. Technorati Tags: Social media, Edelman […]
Pingback from PR & Technology Week in Review: August 6, 2007 on August 3rd, 2007 :
[…] This topic of blog impact has been a hot one, particularly of late. The Friendly Ghost led me over to Onalytica’s Blog discussion over the measuring of influence. There is an interesting list there of the most ‘influential’ marketing blogs (shame on me for not making the list, maybe next year). At the same time we have Edelman London’s Social Media Index, the Power 150 (where I need to update my URL), and more. […]
Pingback from Influence, credibility and advocacy « Heather Yaxley - Greenbanana views of public relations and more on August 3rd, 2007 :
[…] Edelman’s Social Media Index (which has generated over 90 comments so far) considers activity in blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on - making it more a popularity contest. […]
Pingback from Under the Influence on August 3rd, 2007 :
[…] While I was away, David Brain and Jonny Bentwood provoked a fascinating debate by proposing a new measure of how influential particular internet people and publications are, what they call the Social Media Index. […]
Pingback from Young PR » Blog Archive » Don’t Rank Blogs By Numbers on August 5th, 2007 :
[…] Let’s take the small pond that is the PR blogosphere as an example. Todd And’s Power 150 was just acquired by Ad Age, Edelman released their own measurement standard, The Friendly Ghost’s PowerPR Index continues to expand and Omalytica published a list of PR influencer’s. All these lists serve some purpose as an entrance point to key thinkers in the space - but if you used these lists alone to try to influence the PR blogosphere, they would be practically useless. […]
Trackback from Media Guerrilla on August 7th, 2007 :
Social Media Measurement Deconstructed

I know a lot of folks (myself included) have been slamming their heads against the wall for a while now, trying to grok an approach that really captures and measures the impact and value of social media. For many PR
Pingback from my PRception » My life on the D-list on August 8th, 2007 :
[…] With all of this chatter about lists, lists, lists — are they useful? are they accurate? – I’m left to contemplate my own spot on the D-list. It’s nice here. And quiet too (which is conducive to contemplation). […]
Pingback from fresh + new(er) » Blog Archive » Social media measurement - brand awareness and trust in the cultural sector on August 9th, 2007 :
[…] Sixty Second View has compiled an ‘index’ of how these kinds of ego search results might be compiled to generate a figure to compare with competitors and other organisations. Their methodology, whilst very complex, focusses on assessing how connected the people who are talking about you actually are - this allows for a determination of effective reach, and the trust that may be accreted to those in the conversation. (top level summary mine only) a) Blogs that are talking about you - what are their Technorati rankings, how high are their Google PageRanks, how many BlogLines subscribers do they have etc b) Multi-Format conversations - how popular/connected are the Facebook and MySpace people who are talking about your organisation c) Mini-Updates - frequency and reach of Twitters d) Business Cards - LinkedIn connectedness e) Visual - Flickr influence and popularity can be used to determine how connected and visible posters images of your organisation are. This can be applied to YouTube as well. f) Favourites - Digg, Del.icio.us connectedness […]
Pingback from Moderne-Unternehmenskommunikation.de » Social Media Measurement in der Diskussion: Ein Sortierversuch on August 11th, 2007 :
[…] Wie ich vor einigen Wochen berichtet habe (Beitrag “Social Media Index-Diskussion plus ein Beitrag dazu“), gibt es zur Zeit eine Diskussion um die Richtung “richtigen” Social Media Measurements: In einigen Edelman-Blogs wurde die Idee eines Social Media Index gehegt, der - sieht man sich die derzeit 99 Kommentare an - heftig diskutiert wird. […]
Pingback from Pieces of me on community... : Blogging as transformational on August 13th, 2007 :
[…] Blogging as transformational Published 13 August 07 08:49 AM Gerald Kanapathy’s recent post on successful blogging points towards Microsoft as one company that has been transformed by blogging. Specifically he talks about how blogs “opened up Microsoft” and goes on to say how “it’s now amazingly open and responsive.” While great as that sounds, I’d have to agree with Yag in that the most interesting part is when Kanaphathy writes: What did Microsoft do? I don’t know if they had it before, but it takes certain organizational cultural values. It’s not about process, or rules. In fact, it requires acceptance of uncertainty and ambiguity, tolerance of risk, openness to criticism, and a degree of confidence. These are not things that can be proceduralized, but instead come from how the organization is, uh, organized, and simply the underlying values. To me, this is key. At the end of the day, blogs are a means by which people communicate. It is a means, not an end. So for all those wanting to start a blog because everyone else is, ultimately it comes down to something more intangible. How open and willing is your group or company to change? To uncertainty? To risk? To criticism? To engage with people in an open an ongoing conversation? <aside> At this point, all the marketing types and measurment gurus are probably screaming as this underlying value cannot be adequately captured by a simple measurement such as web views nor time online. There are some intriguing indexes in the works to better capture this space, and there are other ways of measuring the impact however…what is ultimately settled on, if there is such a thing, remains to be seen. </aside> While this may come across to some as staying away from blogging if the underlying values are not there, it’s not meant to be. I just wanted to call this out by illustrating that blogs are not an end to itself. It’s part of a much larger picture, and ultimately it’s success (or failure) depends upon so much more than what we can traditionally measure at this time. Should a company, organization or person for that matter get into blogging, I hope they do so with their eyes open to the whole process. by b2ix Filed under: community, blogs, transparency, metrics, measurements […]
Pingback from BizAmmo.com » Edelman’s Social Media Index on August 15th, 2007 :
[…] Edelman, a major international PR firm, has started working on a Social Media Index project, with the intention of ranking blogs. Personally, the way it’s laid out at this point would make for a pretty useless tool in my opinion, and I’ve detailed why I think so on my PR blog recently. […]
Pingback from Favorieten en bookmarks voor 17th August » Cafe del Marketing on August 18th, 2007 :
[…] Â» Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics - […]
Pingback from Favorieten en bookmarks voor 17th August on August 18th, 2007 :
[…] Â» Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics - […]
Pingback from The Ad Age Power 150 Rewards Longevity » The Buzz Bin on August 18th, 2007 :
[…] These lists are silly, flawed memes that really are great for attracting the bloggers listed to such and such sites (not to mention garnering links). None of them are completely accurate. What really matters are the actual readers. Specifically, whether or not they find your content to be worthwhile, and are loyal. Lists are great ways to discover other blogs. Of all the lists, I prefer this one because it’s hosted by a neutral party (unlike Edelman’s joke). So we’ll leave it at that. […]
Comment from Sourav on August 22nd, 2007 :
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Pingback from Ceating an engagement index for real estate websites — Real Estate Relativity on August 31st, 2007 :
[…] He has written a great series of posts on this topic. Part V of his series steps readers through the application of his process. Jeremiah Owyang adds some additional considerations here and here. And this blog actually walks through how to calculate “influence”. […]
Pingback from Singer.to ~ Refreshing the Daily Grind » Blog Archive » 30 free buzz marketing tools on September 12th, 2007 :
[…] 30 free buzz marketing tools Brought together as the Social Media Index, this is a ranking of some of the best free sites out there that help understand the blogosphere and web culture. […]
Pingback from Measuring online influence « Technobabble 2.0 on September 18th, 2007 :
[…] And what a heated debate it caused when David Brain posted about it on his blog (currently some 108 comments). Some thought that the SMI was a good start - others believed that a completely different approach was needed. Where consensus was reached though, was that a new way of identifying online influencers was needed beyond simply counting inbound links. […]
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Pingback from Forskellige bud på blogmåling « Blogs og effekter on September 25th, 2007 :
[…] Sådan lyder det i et blogindlæg fra David Brain, CEO Edelmann Europe, efter at Edelmann i sommer præsenterede deres Social Media Index. I indexet integrerer de en række andre sociale medier udover blogs i et forsøg på at give en samlet score for aktiviteter i Web 2.0 og dermed liste den totale online-indflydelse med udgangspunkt i en liste af 30 top-bloggere. […]
Pingback from Social Media Audit: Ansatz - Moderne-Unternehmenskommunikation.de on November 1st, 2007 :
[…] Welche Social Media wie wichtig sind und am besten erfasst und bewertet werden k�nnen, dar�ber besteht nach wie vor Uneinigkeit. So hat Edelman zum Beispiel � sehr vorsichtig � den Versuch eines Social Media Index gestartet, also eines Rankings der wichtigsten Blogs anhand von verschiedenen Kennziffern. Die Community reagierte kritisch: Zu gro� die Manipulationsm�glichkeiten (�Aufblasen� der eigenen Relevanz zum Beispiel �ber Selbstverlinkung), zu wenig Aussagekraft �ber die Qualit�t der Bez�ge und Relevanz der Verfasser. Aktuell erregt die Diskussion um die Aussagekraft des Google PageRank die Gem�ter, nachdem Google seine PageRank-Kriterien �berarbeitet und in der Folge eine ganze Reihe von Sites herabgestuft hat, darunter auch so schwere Kaliber wie “Spiegel Online” oder auch einige Top-Blogs. […]
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Pingback from Scout Labs Blog » Blog Archive » on measuring influence on December 6th, 2007 :
[…] A companion piece by Rubel’s colleague, David Brain, lays out the beginnings of a more nuanced formula for measuring influence that starts with the top 30 bloggers (using rankings published by various sources) and attempts to factor in a variety of social networking activities carried out by said bloggers, as follows: […]
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Pingback from "Community Project: Roundtable on Social Media Measurement" from Pro PR on December 26th, 2007 :
[…] Over the past year, people like Jeremiah Owyang, Kami Huyse, Scott Karp, Christopher Carfi, Mike Manuel, the Research Fellows at the Society for New Communications Research, John Bell, Flemming Madsen, Geoff Livingston, Katie Paine, David Brain, Brendan Cooper, Brian Solis and Jeff Jarvis have made valuable contributions to our emerging understanding of social media measurement and metrics. […]
Comment from Eamon on January 9th, 2008 :
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Pingback from Peut-on réellement mesurer l’influence des réseaux sociaux ? at Half-Day on January 13th, 2008 :
[…] C’est en prenant en compte ses nouveaux canaux d’expression que David Brain (Edelman) a tenté de mettre en place une nouvelle façon de mesurer l’influence « globale » d’un blogueur suivant les différents réseaux sociaux (et donc media) qu’il occupe. La posture est intéressante et la méthodologie attractive. […]
Pingback from » Distributed Influence white paper (or son of SMI) sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics on January 16th, 2008 :
[…] In July last year Jonny Bentwood and I published our Social Media Index, a crude attempt to quantify someone’s on-line footprint. To this day I get comments to that original post and if you take a look at them you will notice that this is both a complex and emotive subject. We promised to take the debate to the next stage and this it. A discussion paper based on a round-table session held at Edelman’s offices in New York with a pretty distinguised group: […]
Comment from David Brain on January 16th, 2008 :
Here’s the white paper that resulted from the roundtable that resulted from the comments to this post: http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=531
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Pingback from Social media white paper: Introduction & why is it important to measure online influence « Technobabble 2.0 on January 21st, 2008 :
[…] Following the publication of the Edelman’s Social Media Index in July 2007 with David Brain (CEO, Edelman Europe), a roundtable was devised to bring together a group of interested stakeholders representing all key constituencies to address the question of influence and how it should be measured. These people were: […]
Pingback from Social media white paper: social media index « Technobabble 2.0 on January 21st, 2008 :
[…] The initial catalyst behind the roundtable was the publication of the Social Media Index. A summary of which is shown below. […]
Pingback from Indflydelse i de sociale mediers tidsalder « Blogs og effekter on January 21st, 2008 :
[…] januar 21, 2008 Kristine Fjord Tolborg Edelman har offentliggjort et white paper om sociale medier og deres indflydelse. Det tager sit afsæt i det Social Media Index, som jeg tidligere har omtalt her, og som Edelman lancerede i sommers som et bud på en metode til at liste de mest indflydelsesrige aktører inden for de sociale medier. Efterfølgende har de afholdt en rundbordsdiskussion med en række af branchens prominente spillere som deltagere, og det er hovedpunkterne derfra, man kan læse i deres white paper. […]
Pingback from Stop looking at the blog and start looking at the blogger – Part IV - Monitoring « Using IT on January 23rd, 2008 :
[…] Social Media Index - thank you Laura for pointing me to this article […]
Pingback from St. Paul’s Reach » The role of influence in social media - where should the work be done? on January 23rd, 2008 :
[…] I was a little uncomfortable with the structure of the Edelman Social Media Index when it was released last year, finding it quite restrictive in its choice of attributes. To be fair, Edelman themselves have indicated it was “a crude attempt to quantify someone’s on-line footprint” but the process didn’t end there with a subsequent round-table meeting organised in New York to take the discussion further. […]
Pingback from Doug Haslam » Blog Archive » PRobecast 25: Social Media PR, Grammar Vandal, and more on February 6th, 2008 :
[…] “Social Media Influence” index: Do we need one? Is it useful? Should we create one that shows Tech PR Gems to be the most influential blog? […]
Pingback from Media Philosopher » Influencer Share of Meme on February 8th, 2008 :
[…] You can see from the above chart that Jonny Bentwood is not only the meme starter, but he is also a prominent part of the meme itself. His Influencer Share of Meme is 43.6% (48 mentions out of 110 on-topic posts in a 30 day window). This means that when someone talks about distributed influence, they also talk about Jonny Bentwood 43.6% of the time. The remaining Influencer Share of Meme leaders for meme are Peter Kim with 12.7%, Jeff Jarvis and Steve Rubel at 11.8%, David Brain at 10.9%, Max Kalehoff at 7.2%, Keith O’Brien and Henry Copeland at 6.4%, Dr. Walter Carl, Sarah Petersen and Charlene Li at 5.5%, Jim Tobin and Rick Murray 4.5%, Kami Huyse at 3.6% […]
Pingback from Anna Miotk - blog » Blog Archive » Social Media Index on February 11th, 2008 :
[…] Wynikowi w każdej z kategorii przeważa się prze wagi: Blog - 30%; Multi-format - 20%; Mini-updates - 25%, Business cards - 7%, Visual - 3%; Favourites - 15% i tworzony jest całkowity wynik dla każdej z kategorii. Suma wszystkich kategorii tworzy wskaźnik Social Media Index dla danego bloga. http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=325 […]
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Pingback from PRobecast #25: PR on Wikipedia, Social Media Influence, Grammar Vandal and more | Tech PR Gems on June 13th, 2008 :
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Pingback from OffCoarse » Where do you rank in the world of Social Media on June 17th, 2008 :
[…] » Social Media Index sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics # Blog - analysed Google Rank, inbound links, subscribers, alexa rank, content focus, frequency of updates, number of comments# Multi-format - analysed Facebook - number of friends# Mini-updates - analysed Twitter - number of friends, followers and updates# Business cards - analysed LinkedIn - number of contacts# Visual - analysed Flickr - number of photos uploaded from the person/s or about the person/s# Favourites - analysed Digg, del.icio.us Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
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Pingback from Edelman’s Social Media Index on September 27th, 2008 :
[…] Edelman, a major international PR firm, has started working on a Social Media Index project, with the intention of ranking blogs. Personally, the way it’s laid out at this point would make for a pretty useless tool in my opinion, and I’ve detailed why I think so on my PR blog recently. […]
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Pingback from Media-Blog » Blog Archive » How big is your Social Media Footprint? Eine Antwort auf eine topaktuelle Frage on December 11th, 2008 :
[…] Der Carbon Footprint ist in USA schon eine feste Management-Grösse, doch wie gross ist ihr Social Media Footprint? Ja, genau Social Media Footprint. Denn heute zählt zum Brand Equity auch die Zahl der Links und Beziehungen, die ein Unternehmen generiert hat: der Social Media Footprint. Den kann man operationalisieren und messen: Sixty Second View has attempted to measure your social media footprint via the Social Media Index and it’s another good effort with some reasonable assumptions. Whilst there’s no golden bullet at present - much like search - there’s a set of criteria of sorts to measure against and then the 5% that’s human perception. […]
Comment from genericultram on December 28th, 2008 :
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Pingback from Infuse » Blog Archive » Measuring the influence of social media users on January 1st, 2009 :
[…] Part of my problem is that the degree of influence is asserted, measured by the number of links or some other dubious metric. So I’m intrigued by an emerging method of determining the influence of blogs and other social media such as FaceBook and LinkedIn. Hat tip to James Governor who linked to David Brain’s sixtysecondview blog. David runs Edelman PR in the UK, but otherwise seems a good chap… […]
Comment from Jradmhnb on January 4th, 2009 :
Privet,
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Comment from micronion on January 11th, 2009 :
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Comment from kerolisa on January 12th, 2009 :
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Comment from sba on February 23rd, 2009 :
Loved the read, keep the posts coming.
Pingback from Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)? | SEO Ranking, Marketing and Tactic on February 26th, 2009 :
[…] David Brain, CEO and President of Edelman Europe, is working on a formula for a social media index, the likes of which we may see embraced by Google and other search engines in the future. […]
Pingback from Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)? | SEO Backlinking - SEO and Online Reputation Management Blog on February 28th, 2009 :
[…] David Brain, CEO and President of Edelman Europe, is working on a formula for a social media index, the likes of which we may see embraced by Google and other search engines in the future. […]
Pingback from Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)? | Corporate Internet Reputation Management on February 28th, 2009 :
[…] David Brain, CEO and President of Edelman Europe, is working on a formula for a social media index, the likes of which we may see embraced by Google and other search engines in the future. […]
Pingback from Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)? | Press Release -Reputation Management on February 28th, 2009 :
[…] David Brain, CEO and President of Edelman Europe, is working on a formula for a social media index, the likes of which we may see embraced by Google and other search engines in the future. […]
Pingback from SEOForumz Blog Site -Learn SEO and more.. » Blog Archive » Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)? on March 9th, 2009 :
[…] David Brain, CEO and President of Edelman Europe, is working on a formula for a social media index, the likes of which we may see embraced by Google and other search engines in the future. […]
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Pingback from JCPR Twitter Index « Technobabble 2.0 on May 5th, 2009 :
[…] When I published the Social Media Index with David Brain that attempted to rank an individual’s presence across all platforms, we received a huge amount of feedback. A great deal of this focused on the fact that what we were listing was popularity and not what is more important which is influence or engagement. The resulting white paper on distributed influence tried to remedy this by analysing measurement in far greater detail. […]
Comment from Надежда Голубева on August 4th, 2009 :
Я считаю, что Вы допускаете ошибку. Могу это доказать. Пишите мне в PM, пообщаемся.
Comment from Gostak on August 13th, 2009 :
Почитал комментарии, немного удивился,
почемы Вы так думаете всеобще? Я совсем другово мнения
Заръясните своё мнение
Comment from Total on August 19th, 2009 :
Совершенно верно, все на высоте сделано, грамотно.
Comment from Uirist on August 20th, 2009 :
Согласен с автором полностью! Подпишусь ка на RSS!
Comment from Likort on August 23rd, 2009 :
Ну что я могу сказать, в целом статья интересная, но нет самой изюминки.
Не говорю, что я написал бы лучше, но тем не менее(
Comment from umorim on August 25th, 2009 :
Интересная статья, думаю следует добавить RSS
Comment from Erisan on August 25th, 2009 :
Адекватный коммент, буду следить за обновлениями!
Comment from KaxslilaJoila on September 4th, 2009 :
Отлчная статья +++ Автору респект!
Comment from Barbus on September 8th, 2009 :
Приятно была удивлена, что кроме меня присутствуют еще дамы.
Comment from Multyashka on September 8th, 2009 :
Блог понравился, только побольше бы информации и наполнения надо. Тогда все полностью будет на высоте.
Comment from Fredy on September 10th, 2009 :
Тутнекоторые посетители задают такие вопросы, что охринеть можно. Не тем интересуетесь
Comment from Grenik on September 10th, 2009 :
Всем привет, смотрю что тут все такие подхалимы, что не коммент , то лесть полная….
Comment from Rodnik on September 12th, 2009 :
По тематике блога информация подобрана совсем не плохо, хорошая работа, интересно почитать.
Comment from Informer on September 13th, 2009 :
На мой взгляд довольно неплохой блог, авторам салют, хорошо поработали.
Comment from Lubertus on September 14th, 2009 :
Жаль, что сейчас не могу высказаться - опаздываю на встречу. Но вернусь - обязательно напишу что я думаю по этому вопросу.
Comment from KetyKat on September 15th, 2009 :
Неплохая информация подобрана сдесь, стараются люди, так держать!
Comment from KodPhone on September 16th, 2009 :
Неплохой контент сдесь, практически все по тематике, блог на отлично сделан.
Comment from Vinmed on September 18th, 2009 :
Народ, может кто нибудь скинет ссылочку на лекарственные травы?? Не могу найти нормальный сайт.
Comment from ASSISTENT on September 19th, 2009 :
Случайно попал на этот блог, честно скаже что понравился очень, буду постоянным посетителем.
Comment from Codik on September 19th, 2009 :
Достойный внимания блог, продолжайту в том же духе.
Comment from Sheriff on September 20th, 2009 :
Блог вполне нормальный, но дизайн поменять стоит.
Comment from Landshaft on September 22nd, 2009 :
Согласен, что блог не плохой, но можно и по интересней сделать.
Comment from Boetc on September 23rd, 2009 :
Хороший блог, и направление по тематике подобранно неплохо, молодцы.
Comment from Assirius on October 6th, 2009 :
Все тут нормально, обновления только бы почаще появлялись и вообще супер будет.
Comment from Simios on October 12th, 2009 :
Что то непонятно кто чего тут пишет, мозговая атака какая то прямо.
Comment from auto accident attorney jacksonville on October 17th, 2009 :
I am really loving the theme
Pingback from » Tweetlevel - and a PR top 100 in ‘tweetlevel’ order. sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics on November 12th, 2009 :
[…] The latest in our efforts to quantify the unquantifiable and reduce you to a mere number was launched yesterday. Yet again we brutalise complex human concepts like Trust, Popularity, Influence and Engagement with our over-simplistic (but pretty bloody clever) algorithms. With the Social Media Index (SMI) we did it to try measure ‘influence’ across a variety of social media platforms and now we have had a bit of a think about Twitter. Well, I say “we” but really I mean the fiendishly smart Jonny Bentwood. […]
Comment from Ben Smith on December 8th, 2009 :
nnnn
Comment from Banki on December 25th, 2009 :
Very helpfull article for my project, thanks
Comment from daster68er on January 20th, 2010 :
http://yaycacudby.livejournal.com/ - �� Russia ��
Comment from Мотоцикл Honda on February 3rd, 2010 :
Интересные материалы читаются очень легко. Пишите дальше в том же духи, спасибо вам от читателей блога
Comment from Автомобили Hyundai on February 3rd, 2010 :
Абсолютно с вами согласен
Comment from Автомобили Hyundai on February 3rd, 2010 :
Абсолютно вас поддерживаю, мы с вами одинаково мыслим.
Comment from Автомобили Nissan on February 3rd, 2010 :
Согласен, что пост получился отличным. Великолепная работа! Сразу видно, от души написано
Comment from Народные средства on February 4th, 2010 :
Отлично пишете. Надеюсь, на вашем блоге такие посты будут появляться почаще.
Comment from Mitsubishi on February 4th, 2010 :
Здорово пишите вы конечно, Хотелось бы, чтобы на вашем блоге такие посты появлятьслись почаще.

Social Media Index

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