Influence is in the eye of the audience (not the beholder)

This topic of “influence” can be a pretty polarizing one between members of the Twitterverse. In fact, one of the most common questions we get is how we define whether someone is an influencer. (The short answer is that we don’t)

Doing what we do, we are fortunate enough to have received lots of great feedback on what influence means. Hence, we would like to share our thoughts here, as well as understand what everyone’s opinion is.

Besides being a very healthy topic to have a open discussion around, having a more well-rounded understanding will also allow us to construct our engine better. Please leave your comments below or @reply us.  =D

Note: Our recommendations engine have clearly not caught up with these ideals below, but believe it would be good to share what we are working towards!

1) Influence is in the eye of the audience (not the beholder!)

timvskris 

What: We judge influence much less in accordance to how many “powerful followers” they have, than how relevant and credible they are to users who viewing the recommendations.

Tim O’Reilly is (and should be) considered influential for web technologists wanting to know about big trends. But when it comes to UI designers who want to learn from each other, folks like Kris Colvin (who shares lots of great tips on designing interfaces) should be considered as influential.

Not possible to compare Tim / Kris. Influence is all in the eye of the audience, and is impossible to express as an attribute of the individual!

What We Work On:
1) Use personalization techniques to determine recommendations based on an user’s existing network and interactions,
2) Ascertaining the credibility of the individuals being recommended. Again, credibility is not universal, but personalized to the user.

Problems: Due to the way Twitter networks are constructed, A-listers, tech, and marketing folks still occasionally skew the recommendations. When that happens, we get complaints. =P

We will be doing one more round of updates soon that will affect the recommendations significantly.

That Said: It is important to remember that folks new to Twitter do find the A-listers very useful, before they go onto building mutual relationships!

2) Dear Auntie Tweetie: What is my influence grade?

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What: Many folks have asked us what is their “influence grade”, similar to what they get with influence graders like Grader and TwInfluence. It is basic human nature to want to know where you stand. Remember grading in high school? Same thing.

However: We do not believe that a “universal grade” is useful when forming effective relationships is the goal. As mentioned earlier on, influence really is not an attribute of a person, but dependent on the audience.

Consider this: My kid’s influence on me is 1000%, but his influence on everyone else is probably zero (exception being if you swoon at super cute kids).

What We are Working On: A unique metric that would provide the necessary guidance, yet be more meaningful that a bland number. Hint: It would depend on your audience. :)

3) Beyond Influence: Creating relationships where good, relevant people discover each other

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What: Twitter is a great open platform with thriving conversations, lots of smart intelligent people with either information, experiences or relationships to share.

We want to help good, relevant people on Twitter discover and connect to each other. This is clearly beyond what a simple “influence” can achieve.

What We are Working On: Will keep everyone in suspense, but we are definitely working on it! =D

Ok, these are our thoughts on influence. Some questions:

  • What are your thoughts on influence?
  • What would YOU like to be considered an influencer in?
  • What type of “influencers” would you like to discover?

Let us know, we are still just 2 weeks old, and our sole aim in life is to make meaningful connections!

Category: Unique Insights

  • nursingjobs333
    The topic explained by you is very useful to all.
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  • smithfreddick
  • smithfreddick
  • williyamb
    Ecommerce Web Design we would like to share our thoughts here, as well as understand what everyone’s opinion is.

    Besides being a very healthy topic to have a open discussion around, having a more well-rounded understanding will also allow us to construct our engine better.
  • To "BE-HOLD" is a much stronger verb than to "audit" so I would argue this is semantic hair-splitting in search of meaning. Meaning is hidden in the etymology. IMHO, beholding is more akin to understanding, or completely comprehending or perceiving. Those are more active verbs while auditing, listening or witnessing are more passive and less perceptive. To "percieve" is rooted in Latin and means to "capture through and through." Behold is rooted in the sanscrit "to see" while "audience" is rooted in the Latin, "to hear." If I say, "I see what you are saying," I would mean that I can picture or imagine what you are communicating. But if I say, "I hear what you are saying," that seems to me to convey less understanding and more just "auditing."
  • I'd be much more interested in access metrics on the number (or individual users) that [have followed me / I have followed] that have stimulate reactions one from the other. (was I just clear as mud?)

    So for example: it seems to me that although I have a follow(ers) count at around 150 to 200 there is only about six or seven users I @reply, DM or retweet or that do likewise for me. The total number of people with whom this has happened at least once is possibly higher but this metric of influence - notable reaction would be a most useful metric of how well I satisfy those that subscribe. I would say this is my level of influence and that it goes up and down based on how interesting I am at any given time.
  • Good read. Thanks
  • I noticed you failed to mention that open forums like Twitter and other social networking sites require a lot of patience from those willing to use them. As any big celebrity or company who has ever ventured into MySpace or YouTube can tell you, it's a major paradigm shift from the good old days of business cards and cocktail parties. Nowadays you need more of a thick skin and less of a thick skull, or else instant fame can lead to an instant downfall.
  • Qualify follower influence through peer nominations (Tweetnoms). Ask the Tweetnoms what drives their influence nominations (the 'whys' behind the numbers). Then apply a value index to the Tweeter-nominated influencers via secondary research (e.g., influencer's more recent 'external Tweeter' activities: conference speaking, authorships, etc... via automated web keyword search, etc). Just some 7 am thoughts here.
  • zebrasfly
    Influence is a verb! It happens to you!
    Influence occurs when one reads or hears a statement that "rings true". It causes an "aha' experience in the "hungry for knowledge" recipient. It excites the recipient because it supplies the next piece of the jigsaw for which they have been searching. That piece of the jigsaw is the bit they were looking for but they didnt really even know what it looked like, sounded like, felt like. As it occurs/ appears, there is a moment of exhilaration and excitement that acts like energy and the recipient usually feels the need to tell others or thank them. On twitter it's usually done publicly so that everyone has an opportunity to check it to see if its their next bit of the jigsaw.
  • Tom
    My day job has quite a bit of influence so I use Twitter for other reasons. I use it for ideas.

    The recommended influencers have helped me understand how I should reshape government policy. And for that, I thank you.
  • There are degrees of influence, and everyone has different reasons for following others. And For example, Richard Branson follows me, but I don't think that he would be reading or be influenced by any of my tweets.

    Someone else who is a small business owner could well be very interested in what I have to say, and my tweets could influence them greatly.

    But on Twitter, they both have the same status - a follower of mine. I'm scratching my head trying to think of how you could assign a level of influence by monitoring the numbers of changes in the number of followers.

    Perhaps monitoring the % of followers that follow a link that is inserted by a person could provide an indication of whether the tweets are being read - and therefore being acted on. (If Richard B.clicked on 100% of the links in my tweets, then he may well be influenced by what I write.)

    Regards, Eric G.
  • One of the critical aspects of Twitter regarding influence is "attention", ie. is how many of the followers that someone has are actually watching at the time a tweet goes out. I don't know about you but if I'm not at the computer for a few hours I probably miss 1,000s of tweets, so the individuals you want to influence need to be present. The other unique thing about twitter is it indicates presence when someone tweets, when you tweet back it morphs into an instant message sometime, couple of exchanges can be very influential, a complete argument can be had.

    To me that's the critical part of influence that needs to be measured, the "action" or outcome. Without that pure reach is not a measure of influence. I don't know if anyone measures their click through rates but I get about 2% on all the links I post which is pretty high.

    @Adgenius I rather like your definition:

    "Influence is the power to gather people around an idea, concept or person, who are willing to spread this idea regardless of external benefits."

    Gather? Maybe Lead. And rather than them just being willing to "spread an idea", how about do potentially anything.

    I once saw Zefrank on his video blog "The Show" influence people to make an Earth Sandwich, that is two people laid down two slices of bread on opposites sides of the earth at the same time. The right motivation and tools people will do anything.

    @Scott McMurren Too true that what is the point of influence if you can't peddle it. I say, why can't we, I think we should all have rate cards and I want to select the companies that I would promote :-)


    http://twitter.com/karllong
  • serendipitynz
    Influencers are so variable, I'm inclined to follow people who look at their "followers" and will follow those that are in the same sphere of interest. I'm not inclined to follow those who have a disproportionate number of followers to those followed, ie who have 2000 followers but only follow 100.
  • I'm checking the Influencers at the Bottom of Mr. Tweets Suggestions*

    Why U might ask? Cuz I like taking the Road less Travelled, the Scenic Route if U swill*

    ;)) Peace*
  • Let me add that there is the dynamic aspect of this too. Is your network growing or shrinking. If a person tries to 'play' the system by suddenly retweeting @timoreilly all the time, their influence will shrink because their followers will vanish. They joined for one set of behaviour - change behaviour artifically for a better score - they should leave. I guess megastars get an exemption - @timoreilly could lose 2000 followers and would still carry staggering influence.
  • Let's replay this then -

    there are gross measures - e.g. how many followers do I have, how many of my followers have huge followings.
    There are subcommunity measures - who follows me in web design or bus driving interest communities.
    There is my bridging behaviour - do I cross subtopics or even larger topic communities.
    There is the nature of my tweets - do I distribute others views by retweet, do I put links to multiple sites, do I put links to my own blogs along with others, do I only promote myself by exclusively linking to my own blogs, do I ever get retweeted, who retweets me, do I just talk about the weather and cool parties (still a social influence).

    The guys at thenetworkthinker.com and networkweaving.com have done some really interesting work on determining groupings. My 8 Factors for Web 2.0 Business Success Article (follow my blog link) has the links to a couple of their articles in the text. They used Amazon Book buying data to determine the degree of political polarisation.

    Metadata around books mentioned in tweets, links referred to in tweets (need to unpack tinyurl and is.gd) including keywords in title area, metadata associated with a tweeters profile link and the wording in the twitter bio, maybe analyse twitterer profile link to search for further metadata, presence of # tags and nature of tag, will all contribute to a cluster of first path category metadata. Participation with others will give you second level classification.

    Then you have to work out what it means and give it a rating(s). Perhaps 1-10 for each factor to keep the numbers manageable. Tot2-Soc1-Loc7-BA5-WebS-2 would give me a comparative rating of total (the world - I make just above the bottom), Social (I am the Bottom), Location (pretty good for my one horse town), and then the specialist communities - a factor of 1 doesn't get listed because otherwise it would fill the page. So I would hypothetically have Business Analysis midrange and web Strategy just above the bottom.

    Something like that would really be useful to both viewpoints. Me understanding my place, others assessing my role.
  • admin
    @Rob Thanks for the great definition! Question is, do you think that can that be encapsulated in a way that is deeper than "followers" count?

    @MattSearles Some very good points in here. In essence, you are saying to allow people to express more about themselves, like who they want to be contacted with, why and how?

    @Rufus Very interesting set of analytics. I think that is the kind of analytics that a marketer will kill for! That said, Twitter needs to grow a lot bigger for most marketers to treat it seriously.

    @ScottMcMurren True, but people who peddle their influence lose it fast. ;)

    @blacksonville : Please DM us if you have any ideas, or if you heard anything worthy on this front.

    @AnthonyWhyms Thanks for the great explanation. Besides a bio, what information would you like to provide such that you believe can help you reach your target audience?

    @[Enikao] Very very true. I like the term "meta-influencer" It nicely encapsulates what we are trying to achieve here - which is highlight great people in niches who might not have 20,000 followers!
  • Although it is hard to determine what exactly influence is (change a mind, make s.o. do something, like clic, buy or else ?), I've posted a similar idea about "meta influence" for blogs.

    The idea : there are some bloggers who are not mainstram, have few followers, but whi are regularly red and commented... by popular bloggers with a huge audience. These ones are meta-influencers : they have an impact on the influencers, who might relay your ideas or posts.
  • Determining influence numerically might keep you up at night and even be painful.

    We'd all like an accurate measurement of our personal influence on other's purchases of Pop-Tarts, Red Bull and online purchases, so I'm sure, the question of wether this can be done accurately with our Tweets will be determined by how effective the system will be in weeding out A-listers, bots, no activity followers and our personal tweets and re-tweets.

    In short, reality dictates it will not be completely efficient and some Tweeters WILL attempt to skew the numbers to make their standings (and bragging rights) shine.

    So like the ubiquitous Alexa ranking, the ranking on Mr. Tweet may just wind up being a guideline rather than a true reflection of how far reaching a member of Twitter can affect true change.

    Remember: Obama was already a hot commodity and just brought that hotness to Twitter AFTER he announced in mainstream media that he was
    using SMS to announce his VP.

    His current influence is an outgrowth of his uniqueness in other media.

    Me? Well, I want to influencer the Twitterverse in following up & coming entrepreneurs through my Blog Talk Radio show and soon myUSTreamTV.com live web show.

    I want to find influencers of young entrepreneurs, women and second-career dads who, in this hyper-intensive economic mire, want to improve their lives and live free of the restraint of a job.
  • I enjoyed perusing your content. I understand the ideology of "influence", what I am trying to determine is how do you monetize your efforts with twitter. What tools do you recommend to leverage influential content AND audience to create value for publishers and advertisers. Stay tune, solutions are made every second.
  • as machiavellis bride and godess of spiritual networking i assure you that our influence comes directly from our brilliant scent of power and brains :-)
  • Pray tell: What good is influence if you cannot peddle it? jk (sort of)
  • rufusevison
    What would be useful, and possibly make sense is the ability to ask questions about influence by audience along the line of:

    1a) What is my influence on web analytics? This being equivalent to "what is my influence on those people who are looking at web analytics based things?"

    1 b) What is my influence on this subsection of my audience (individuals or sets of followers)?

    2) What would my influence be if calculated for X who is not currently a follower?

    The latter would give you an idea whether there might be any benefit in trying to bring X into your sphere of influence, while the former might help you to refine your messages.

    This assumes that the measure of influence does not require that the person you are measuring with respect to must be a follower already.

    Rufus
  • On twitter, I have multiple interests... vectors by which I actively connect on.. or am more likely to connect to be based on those interests.. I imagine we are all somewhat like this.. we have lots of interests.. and we seek information in proportion to our interests along these vectors. It seems to me that.. on a certain level.. this collectivized is what creates social hierarchy.

    So.. lets say I'm a musician and interested in music business stuff.. I could connect up to a lot of marketers.. and we could look at how influential a marketer is in the marketing community... but that person might have very little to say on the subject of music marketing.. So.. in terms of my interests then.. that person might have some value in my conceptualizing what I'm doing.. but you could have someone.. who is much less of an influencer in the larger marketing world.. but is focused on music marketing.. and then, for me.. the balance of who's going to be more influential to me.. is going to be weighted a certain way.

    I don't know that you can build an automatic recommendation engine that would work for this.. Further.. there's a difference between who I'm connected with now, and who I might want to be connected to moving forward... Or maybe.. of all my followers.. there are certain people who would have more weight in my thinking about who I should maybe follow.

    I think.. if you wanted to do something that went this far.. you'd need to allow me, when I go to the page.. to some how say "well, this is how I look at it." Further.. at some point, if you're successful enough.. people could put in some kind of information about how they would characterize them selves.. so that you could have the interaction of what they put in, with what I'm trying to pull in, with the conventional recommendation engine stuff.

    Other wise.. I think there's a certain subtlety factor.. in how you things work.. that can very easily not be revealed.. I'm thinking?
  • Influence is the power to gather people around an idea, concept or person, who are willing to spread this idea regardless of external benefits.

    http://twitter.com/Adgenius
  • I'm happy to hear you folks are working on a "unique metric" - I think far too many people think of twitter influence like the Nielson Ratings. With twitter, what is interesting is not so much the number of followers a user has but how they bridge "adjacent" communities. How does information and links move across networks?

    A friend of mine recently quipped that (the majority of) marketers should get their own internet, or at least their own twitter! I'd love to see some social metrics that actually work for average users. My first test of the Mr. Tweet system just pointed me at mugshots of the same old, same old internet celebutantes.
  • I agree that ranks and influence scores are by and large meaningless (exception - as a tool to show clients / outsiders, how powerful twitter can be).

    A recommendation system that filters out all the A listers or people with a gazillion followers (I reckon most of us are interested in quality not quantity) would be good.
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