My Problem With the Fast Company Influence Project
07.06.2010 | Chris Bailey | Focused on Social Media
The latest social media meme to roll around is Fast Company’s Influence Project and I’m going to take the role of pissy curmudgeon on this one.
Fast Company wants to find out who the most influential people online are right now. In order to figure this out, they’ve devised the following measurement criteria:
1. The number of people who directly click on your unique URL link. This is the primary measure of your influence, pure and simple.
2. You will receive partial “credit” for subsequent clicks generated by those who register as a result of your URL. In other words, anyone who comes to the site through your link and registers for their own account will be spreading your influence while they spread theirs. That way, you get some benefit from influencing people who are influential themselves. We will give a diminishing, fractional credit (1/2, ¼, 1/8 etc ) for clicks generated up to six degrees away from your original link.
So let me get this straight. An individual’s measure of influence is how much they can bait their peers, friends, and followers to click a link? Anyone else think this sounds more like a popularity contest rather than a measure of influence?
And when it comes to measurement, here’s yet another dubious claim to measuring something humanistic using only a quantitative scale (and a rather paltry scale at that). Fast Company, if you really want to understand online influence, slick graphics (in Flash!) and linkbaiting isn’t going to cut it. Start asking WHY individuals gain, maintain, and utilize influence and then maybe I’ll take your little parlor trick seriously.
Or am I wrong?
UPDATE 7.7.10: Alexia Tsotsis at SFWeekly digs a little deeper and demonstrates the crass nature of this whole fiasco, implicating both Fast Company and Mekanism in some rather shady doings. Talk about tarnishing your reputation.
3 Responses to “My Problem With the Fast Company Influence Project”
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Chris,
Jocelyn Hawkes here, special projects editor for Fast Company. I want to thank you for taking an interest in The Influence Project. The project itself is part of a larger editorial package. It’s an experiment in influence – how it spreads, and who spreads it. We know it’s not perfect, as any experiment is, but we hope in the end it will result in useful information. We strive to bring discussions like this one into the fold, and explore the bigger picture – all sides of the story if you will. Your concern about how “individuals gain, maintain, and utilize influence,” is a valid one, and something that we will continue to address in our reporting around The Influence Project, on fastcompany.com, and in our November issue. The results of The Influence Project are just one component of a larger, and hopefully more insightful, observation of social media. I encourage you to check out a more detailed explanation at http://www.fastcompany.com/1667964/popularity-ego....
Best,
Jocelyn
Chris, I participated in this whole thing and immediately regretted it the minute I hit that share button. What can I tell you, it was a moment of weakness and I felt bad about spamming my twitter and facebook pals with such an obvious ego-boosting come-on. Thanks for putting into words the complete unease (and douchiness) I felt when I so thoughtlessly added my "vote" to something that later on I deemed a bit silly.
All that being said, I wonder if these kinds of things, blunt as they are, are the only effective ways to gather some sense of who the big dogs are….I don't think so, but I'm trying to figure out why Fast Company wanted to do this. Wouldn't a count of retweets give the same kind of data back? It's an equally blunt instrument, so….
Thanks again for your thoughts on this, as always, you shine a light!
Chris, Nice post. I'd like to proclaim: I am a subtle influencer. Simply a gut check, not a click check.
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