Under the influence of the social web

Social networking is the Web 2.0 darling. It’s hard to imagine that Facebook didn’t exist just six years ago and Twitter only four. Not to mention that Facebook founder, 26-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, recently surpassed Apple’s Steve Jobs as well as media mogul Rupert Murdoch on the Forbes US rich list. Worth an approximate US$6.9bn (£4.4bn) Zuckerberg is estimated to be the 35th richest person in the US.

Eight members of the list of 400 are under 40. Three, including Zuckerberg, are co-founders of Facebook. Another two of that list are the co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both aged 37. Such is the power, impact and influence of social networking and the internet in today’s world that five of the eight richest people under 40 work with social media.

To quote Double Rainbow Guy: “But what does it mean?”

The social web, the web of trust, or the web of influence has come crashing into our lives. There are three big players in this market – Google, Facebook and Twitter. These three companies are jostling for ownership of your social graph (a term coined by Mark Zuckerberg).

Open APIs have created a web so intimately interlinked that practically everything you do on the internet is monitored and recorded by one of these three companies. Every click is like tossing a pebble into a pond as it reverberates through your social graph.

Simply clicking a “Like” button on someone’s blog adds yet another packet of information to your social graph. Everything you say on your blog, in your Facebook updates, via your tweets, in your comments on posts and news articles is monitored and analysed.

There is an intrinsic relationship between your web content (what you are saying, creating or sharing) and with whom you are connected, eventually leading up to one unified and seamless doppelganger identity in the Web 3.0 virtual space.

Facebook, Google and Twitter basically define your online soul.

Despite Google’s informal corporate motto “Don’t be evil”, it is unsettling to realise that your online social graph is not owned nor entirely controlled by you. The majority of people are happily ignorant of their social graph. Most people don’t understand the effects of their online behaviour, not to mention their influence. If you have a Google account, take your “Social Circle” as an example of how your social graph is being created behind the scenes.

All of your online connections and relationships, combined with the content you are creating and sharing, are giving birth to your online influence or authority.

What makes an influencer?
I recently took part in an online survey by PR firm Vocus in association with Brian Solis. They asked – what makes an online influencer?

Key findings include the following:
• Influence is different from popularity – An overwhelming 90% of respondents perceive a big difference between “influence” and “popularity.”

• Quality of network and quality of content have a defining impact on influence. The top contributing factors that make a person or brand influential include the “quality or focus of the network” (60%), the “quality of content” (55%), which tied with the “capacity to create measurable outcomes” (55%), and the “depth of relationship” a person or brand has with social contacts (40%).

• Content is king, but context is queen. 50% of respondents said that the single most important action a person or brand can take to increase their influence online was to “create, post or share compelling content.”

• Views vary on effective measurement. A majority, 29% of respondents, said “action” is the most important measure of effectiveness in social media, yet more than one third (36%) also ranked “action” as the least important. “Views” was the next highest ranked measure of effectiveness with 36%, while “click-throughs” tied last with “Retweets” on Twitter and “Likes” on Facebook.

Most important are the findings regarding influence as opposed to popularity. 90% of respondents drew a clear distinction. The survey states that influence drives, motivates, is steadfast, and causes people to take action, while popularity is hip, perhaps amusing and wanes easily among a fickle audience.

Some of the comments provided along with this question include: “Liking you and listening to you are two different things,” wrote one respondent. “Popularity is an expression of volume while influence is an expression of value,” said another. While another said, “You can be popular without influence and vice versa.”

The findings of the Vocus survey are corroborated by scientists at Northwestern University, Illinois, who recently used algorithms to rank the most influential people tweeting on the popular topics of the day.

Sifting through millions of tweets, the scientists concluded that the most “influential” users on Twitter were actually people with inferior profiles in terms of followers, but who were experts in their own fields, rather than celebrities with millions of followers.

“People think that just because you have a huge number of followers you may potentially be an influencer, and that is not the case,” said Professor Alok Choudhary, who led the research. “A lot of people think that just because you tweet a lot means you may have influence or you are important. But there are a lot of junk tweets. Our premise is that influencers are those that dynamically change the opinions of people on specific topics, or the topic of the moment.”

You can use their website “Pulse of the Tweeters” to test these findings.