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Klout should not be regarded as the standard for influence online

39C7BzcP PA36rYW KEDl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ 300x300 Klout should not be regarded as the standard for influence onlineBy Alexandra Reid

I have a hard time believing that Klout is and should be the standard for influence online.

My reasoning is grounded in the fact that Klout, which purports to measure social media influence, is losing clout because of its failure to follow social media best practices. It seems illogical to me that so many of us are measuring our social media success based on standards developed by an unsocial organization.

Allow me to elaborate.

Klout is creepy and walled

As reported by Yahoo news, Klout has come under fire for some recent missteps. Users have expressed outrage that Klout’s “user-scraping” tactics were used to make profiles for users who didn’t sign up for the service, including children, and opting out was extremely difficult before the firm finally, under pressure, implemented an opt-out feature.

Klout’s use of “super cookies” was also attacked, as the firm admitted that its servers automatically record the IP address, browser type, or the domain from which you are visiting, the web pages you visit, the search terms you use, and any advertisements on which you click.  It also uses session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how you interact with the site and service, to monitor aggregate usage by users and web traffic routing on the site. Klout’s unsocial self-interest in invoking subscribership was revealed by the public in this story, as was its alarming level of comfort in breaching user privacy, which is comparable to those “philosophies on privacy” employed by Google and Facebook (Although Google made a small step in the right direction recently with the launch of “Good to know.”)

I was briefly relieved to learn that Klout updated its scoring metrics algorithm to favour quality over quantity and measure the value of the interactions we are having and inspiring instead of the number of conversations we engage in online. Furthermore, it stated that it is working to help users understand changes in their scores. Both are seemingly good moves on the surface.

But, please, first take a minute to consider that Klout was still regarded as the standard for influence long before it made these updates. Of course, our understanding of what being social online really means has evolved in this time, and Klout has made a move in the right direction to reflect this new understanding. However, it seems to me that Klout was awarded authority prematurely, and much of this authority came as result of automatic profile generation. As Yahoo’s digital trends reporter Molly McHugh wonders in the previous article, “How many of its 100 million scores belong to self-registered users?”

With these updates, it seems the company is moving in a more social direction and adopting measures of greater transparency. However, while it stated that many user scores would stay the same or go up after the algorithm change, many did go down and it neglected to reveal any concrete details as to why this was the case, stating simply, “We believe our users will be pleased with the improvements we’ve made” before sharing a basic and ambiguous chart explaining a “distribution of the Score changes,” where “large decreases in Score are rare.”

6283094309 6c8c41d5f82 300x166 Klout should not be regarded as the standard for influence online

While I agree that companies need to keep details of their algorithms safe from idea-thieving copycats, this situation cemented people’s opinion that the company is secretive, which is inherently unsocial. This is a tough line to walk, no doubt, and I’m interested in hearing your view on how Klout should establish and maintain a balance.

The last nail in the Klout coffin for me is that it encourages us to regularly commit a great social sin in judging one another, not by the merits of our personal interactions, but by a number spat out by an algorithm which we don’t understand that claims to measure the quality of a users’ interactions with everyone else. Does that make sense to you? I wouldn’t trust the opinion of a perfect stranger who hasn’t interacted with my connections or myself if he said one person was more influential than another for reasons he can’t explain. Would you?

Klout is too simplistic to be credible on its own

The benefit of Klout is that it gives us a very basic understanding of how good a person is at posting sharable messages. But this isn’t influence. As Dr. Morad Menyoucef, associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, stated in this USA Today article:

There is influence when the actions of an individual can induce his friends/followers to behave like him, e.g., in adopting a new technology, in choosing a brand over another, or in voting for a political candidate. Hence if I share a post or comment on it, it does not necessarily mean I have been influenced by the person who posted it. My comment could be contrary to what the initiator of the post intended. Or I can decide to share it with someone because I believe he might be interested, even though I have no interest in it whatsoever.

He goes on to state that Klout is a simplistic take on influence because users in a network are not influenced in the same way — they are not identical with regards to the probability that they adopt a certain behaviour, and a user’s amount of influence on another user may depend on the relationship between them.

Bridging off that point, perhaps Klout also gives us some indication as to who has “real life” clout — a person’s followers are eager to listen and share what they deem to be credible and interesting information based on social interactions that have happened outside of social media. But in those instances, why would we need Klout to tell us what we already know?

But after all of this is said, social media professionals still feel the pressure to use Klout as a metric to measure influence online. I think it holds value in informing us when our social media “influence” (if you can really call it that) has increased or decreased as well as where we stand among all others measured by the same algorithm. But it doesn’t provide us with the full picture and shouldn’t be used as the sole means for measuring influence. The only apparent solution I have found to understand general trends over time is to track Klout and compare those results with PeerIndex and Grader scores – two other companies claiming to measure online influence. If all three are moving up, I can reasonably assume that what I’m doing is working. If one goes down while the other two go up, which happens on a regular basis, I know there is something happening that is discrediting my results.

What do you think?

Image: BrandFlair

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Alexandra Reid

Posted by: Alexandra Reid on December 6, 2011

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Posted in: Social media — Leave a comment

There are benefits to publicness and they are worth fighting for

jeff jarvis author of upcoming public parts how sharing in the digital age improves the way we work and live 300x225 There are benefits to publicness and they are worth fighting forBy Alexandra Reid

Jeff Jarvis, a widely respected influencer in the media space, spoke at Third Tuesday Ottawa last week about his new book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live, the benefits of what he calls “publicness” and why it deserves just as much attention as privacy.

As a self-proclaimed “publicness advocate,” Jarvis says that “in our current privacy mania we are not talking enough about the value of publicness. If we default to private, we risk losing the value of the connections the Internet brings: meeting people, collaborating with them, gathering the wisdom of our crowd, and holding the powerful to public account.” Jarvis believes we have a “right and need to protect our privacy” – to control our information and identities – but also that the conversation and our decisions should include consideration of the value of sharing and linking. Jarvis’s intention is to work towards the protection of what’s public as a public good, and that includes the Internet.

In his presentation, Jarvis explained that privacy and publicness are like hot and cold and light and dark in that they depend on one another. There are some things that need to stay private so that we can be public safely, such as banking information, your work schedule and home address. However, Jarvis says that we can’t let the fear driven by privacy stop us from exploring the benefits of publicness. While safety is important, we shouldn’t manage our entire lives around the worst that can happen, says Jarvis.

PublicPartsBookcover There are benefits to publicness and they are worth fighting for‘Zuck’s Law’

In Public Parts, Jarvis explains that, in his opinion, Mark Zuckerberg follows his own social version of Moore’s law that decrees, “This year, people will share twice as much information as they did last year, and next year, they will share twice as much again.” Furthermore, according to Jarvis, Zuckerberg believes that “with the right tools and power in the right hands, the world will keep getting better,” and that’s why Facebook’s mission is “to make the world more open and connected.” Jarvis says that Zuckerberg is an “optimist who must believe in his fellow man, in empowering him more than protecting against him” and that he believes “in helping us share, which will make the world more public and lead to greater transparency and trust, accountability and integrity.” The master plan, stated by Zuckerberg, facilitated through social media and support by Jarvis is that, “In the future, things should be tied to your identity, and they’ll be more valuable that way.”

Privacy in history

In his quest for discovering how we should harmonize private and public activities to reap the benefits of both, Jarvis had to start at the very beginning and explore the historical circumstances under which privacy itself was invented and the reasons why we continue to perpetuate this idea. In his book, Jarvis writes that the “first serious discussion of privacy as a legal right in the United States did not begin until 1890” and that advances in technology were the catalysts.

In 1888, Kodak introduced its first boxy, portable “snapshot” camera, which could be carried anywhere and take pictures of anyone, which could then be sent into circulation by the mass media. These “kodak fiends,” caught taking photographs of the “good ladies of Newport,” President Roosevelt and others, sparked the discussion of privacy that would continue until this very day. However, Jarvis explains that “the key moment in the birth of American privacy law came in 1890, when Louis Brandeis, later a Supreme Court Judge, and Samuel Warren wrote a Harvard Law Review essay, “The Right to Privacy,” in which they proposed a new principle protecting “the right to be let alone.”’ However, as Jarvis points out, “publicness is protected in the Bill of Rights – that is the essence of the First Amendment – but there is no article assuring the right to privacy.”

Technology, such as the Kodak camera, Gutenberg’s printing press, microphones, telephones, recorders and now the Internet, perpetuate both the issue of, and our fears about, privacy. In his book, Jarvis writes,

Bad things could happen. It is prudent and wise to consider those possibilities and guard against the dangers, as our army of privacy advocates does. But those new technologies also present new opportunities, which we could miss if we are too busy building our bunkers. Presses print gossip but also art; Kodak cameras can embarrass yet enlighten; digital cameras power spying as well as grandparents’ Skype video calls; orbiting cameras equip spy satellites and Google Earth. In our messy tangle of wires and the frightening sparks shooting among them lays progress.

In his presentation, Jarvis explained the benefits that he believes come with publicness.

Publicness is beneficial in that it:

  1. Builds relationships
  2. Disarms strangers
  3. Enables collaboration
  4. Unleashes the wisdom (and generosity of the crowd)
  5. Defuses the myth of perfection
  6. Neutralizes stigmas
  7. Grants immortality…or at least credit
  8. Organizes us
  9. Protects us

Companies and government need to be public, too

And it isn’t just individuals who will benefit from publicness, says Jarvis. Companies, too, need to become more public to maintain the (ever more public) public’s trust. The case of Wikileaks, for example, shows us that the ability to hold a secret from the public is becoming harder. Furthermore, opening up a company to receive collaborative input from the masses, as in a public beta, can lead to massive improvement of a company’s products and services. Regarding government transparency, Jarvis says, “government must be transparent by default and secret by necessity.” To clarify, if the information can help others then it should be shared.

While there will be radical disruption along with endless ethical implications, Jarvis says it’s the wrong time to regulate the Internet and make it do what the world “used to do.” The Internet is an incredibly powerful tool and we are just beginning to understand the power it will have in our lives, says Jarvis. Our publicness on the Internet needs protection and only we the people of the Internet will be able to achieve this. Jarvis is calling for a discussion of the principles of an open society and an open net.

Let us start the discussion. What do you think should be the principles of publicness?

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Alexandra Reid

Posted by: Alexandra Reid on November 22, 2011

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Posted in: Social media — Leave a comment

Facebook’s new features: What B2B businesses need to know

facebook logo 300x300 Facebook’s new features: What B2B businesses need to knowBy Alexandra Reid

Mark Zuckerberg rocked the Facebook boat again last week when he introduced a handful of new features that received mixed reactions from the site’s 750 million users.

From expressions of excitement to confusion to outright hatred on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, as well as mainstream media such as the BBC, it’s clear that Facebook users have become increasingly more vocal with their opinions of the free site. This PCWorld article reveals a number of immediate user reactions to Facebook’s new features, from the blunt and judgmental, “Sucks,” to the pessimistically speculative, “Wonder what is going to replace Facebook,” which suggests that these new features may be just the provocation Google Plus needed to transition users to its platform. But then again, who’s to say Google won’t turn the product in radical new directions in another year, as The Guardian’s Dan Gillmor asked in his intriguing post.  It isn’t all bad though, as one individual, who was featured on MacWorld, tweeted “It’s the ‘Facebook cycle’ – things change, people complain, they get over it and carry on.”

It may be easy enough for personal Facebook users to “get over it and carry on,” but for B2B businesses that already find the Facebook environment challenging as a marketing channel, these changes could cripple their ability to engage prospects if they don’t have a sound strategy in place. While Facebook has yet to announce how these new features will affect brand Pages, if at all, they do impact how marketers reach their target communities. Furthermore, according to an email from the f8 conference’s press contact, sighted on NY Convergence, the company “hope(s) to make Pages more consistent with the new Timeline in the future…” so it is best businesses familiarize themselves with these new features early on.

“Facebook is not just a B2C marketing channel,” as this recent Business2Community post puts it. “Facebook should be thought of as an extension of a business’s website, blog and online store that promotes and publishes to the channel where its customers are hanging out.” Not only can businesses “like” other businesses’ Pages, prospects that straddle the personal/professional Facebook user fence can like your Page and receive updates on your business. B2B businesses should take advantage of these new features to ensure messaging and communication with prospects is as smooth and efficient as it can be.

The most recent changes introduced by Zuckerberg at f8 last Thursday, streamed live on The Telegraph, include Timeline, Ticker, media integration, the introduction of Open Graph applications and a feed subscription button. Here are some things B2B businesses need to be aware of:

Timeline

Facebook’s Timeline allows users to curate their Facebook profile pages with the photos, events and status updates from past and present. Timelines paint a clearer picture of the individual, as they can shape their profile to reflect who they are and share all their best moments in one place, instead of being limited to sharing only the most recent activity. While more than a little creepy, this presents an extraordinary opportunity for businesses to learn more about their prospective customers and nurture relationships with them. While I would never recommend creeping a prospect’s page and then bringing that information up in a meeting, it does help businesses engage in conversations that are more meaningful to individual prospects. In the B2B environment, where one prospect can have the power to change a business’s financial course, a personal touch can be just the right encouragement to make that crucial sale.

Media integration, Ticker, Open Graph applications and the issue of privacy

Facebook announced a number of partnerships with media companies including Spotify, Netflix, Yahoo, News Corp, Guardian and Hulu that will integrate their features with Facebook. Soon, users will be able to see what their friends are listening to on Spotify or watching on Netflix via the new real-time Ticker stream, for example, and begin listening to and watching the same songs and videos within the application without ever having to leave the page.

Facebook’s newsfeed will now be broken into “big events” and real-time Ticker feeds. The news feed will omit the “Top Stories” and “Most recent” links on the top of the News Feed and replace it with a smarter feed that adjusts content based on the last time you checked it, meaning you won’t miss important relationship status changes, photos or big life events, explains Mashable. The news Ticker, which will reside in the chat column on the right hand side, is a real-time feed of all the activity happening in your social graph, becoming the new “Most Recent” feed.

The first concern here for businesses, as explained on Fast Company, is that these new features could lead to a “great deal of inadvertent oversharing.” In the same article, Facebook’s CTO, Bret Taylor, warns professionals to be careful of what applications they authorize, because “by default, much of what you do on Facebook with applications, even outside Facebook with Netflix and Spotify, and Facebook’s other integrated partners, with be shared auto-magically.”

As Ben Parr said in his article on Mashable, “Facebook has finally done it. It’s just a few updates away now from euthanizing the concept of privacy, already ailing on its network. Timelines and Open Graph, introduced at this week’s f8 conference, sit on either edge of the sword that’s just been run through privacy’s heart.”

As Facebook moves towards providing its users with a “frictionless experience,” professionals should take time to read through their privacy settings. As mentioned previously, be careful which applications you authorize. If you’re friends with a prospect on Facebook, what you’re watching, reading and listening to, and even what locations you check into, can impact their perception of you professionally and damage business relationships.

The second concern is Facebook’s ongoing commitment to making the channel your permanent home on the Internet as it pulls “more partners in, rather than helping (users) get out to the wider world.” Taylor says “if you are a business, and you have a Facebook presence, you are going to need a much broader Facebook marketing strategy in order to find your new customers solely within the Facebook platform.” While there are lots of people on Facebook, these new applications will create a lot of noise, making it more difficult for businesses to find the “right” people.

Subscription button

One of the biggest privacy challenges which businesses have faced on Facebook is that they are not privy to receiving news feed updates if they are not friends with a user. This obstacle has been levelled with the introduction of the subscription button, which allows people to subscribe to parts of a user’s news feed without having to become a Facebook friend. “The new features feels very similar to the follow button on Twitter, where you choose to follow someone’s feed,” explains a New York Times post. Now, businesses can subscribe to a prospect’s feed and also select what information they receive, from photos to status updates, which helps filter out some of the noise. However, users can still set privacy restrictions on what information they are willing to share and with whom, so it’s still not a complete fix to the businessperson’s dilemma.

What are your thoughts on the new Facebook features?

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Alexandra Reid

Posted by: Alexandra Reid on September 27, 2011

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Posted in: Marketing strategy, Public and media relations, Social media — 3 Comments

Top social media trends 2011: Interview with Dave Fleet of Edelman

smb ottawa logo Top social media trends 2011: Interview with Dave Fleet of Edelman By Alexandra Reid

Dave Fleet, Vice President of Digital at Edelman’s Toronto office, and I sat down after his Social Media Breakfast Ottawa presentation to discuss some of the top social media trends that business can expect to come to fruition in 2011. Among the top trends discussed in this video are influence, content curation, search engine optimization, privacy and the importance of having a crisis communications plan. The discussion also offers important information for government workers and communicators who are working with their organizations to implement social media strategies.

Social Media Breakfast Ottawa with Dave Fleet from SMBOttawa on Vimeo.

I would love to hear your input. Please share your comments.

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Alexandra Reid

Posted by: Alexandra Reid on April 7, 2011

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Posted in: Social media — 4 Comments