Guest post: Online influence: Social Collective versus the social individual

Made Social on 23 September 2010 | View Comments

In advance of Social Collective, we have been inviting select people to guest blog and join the SoCol debate, hopefully offering a fresh point of view. We have been asking a range of people to contribute, including those working in social, client side, techies, journos etc with a view of building a wider picture. Any questions raised during this process will be addressed during a panel at SoCol in September.

The latest in the series is from Paul Miller, Head of Digital at Cision UK.

Online influence: Social Collective versus the social individual
By Paul Miller

Given one of the definitions of “collective” in my OED – of or from several or many individuals – “Social Collective” could be, should be, a tautology. How can social activity be anything other than collective?

It’s indisputable that social media has ushered in some kind of mediaocracy. Individuals (or at least, individuals in developed, mainly Western economies) now have the power to publish and distribute content to an extent formerly undreamt of. But Cluetrain-inspired ideas of a newly level playing field, in which all sources of content are equal, are giving way to a social media reality in which new gatekeepers have emerged and new hierarchies been established.

These hierarchies can be mapped according to the ways in which content, ideas, memes, conversations, spread across the internet. Those with an elevated position within the hierarchy can be seen to have more influence on the content that is shared and discussed throughout the network, whether as originators or as powerful propagators of the content in question.

HP Labs recently published details of research into patterns of influence on Twitter. The researchers devised an algorithm to assign a relative influence score and passivity score to every user, with “passivity” a measure of “how difficult it is for other users to influence him or her”, based on how likely they are to retweet relative to everybody else. Combining this data with other, more obvious measures of Twitter influence (number of followers, for example) allowed the authors to develop a predictive model that they describe as “successful”.

Twitter’s 140-character limitations and general transparency make it unusually approachable for those measuring network dynamics. At the other end of the scale is Facebook, whose News Feed follows a blackbox algorithm in assigning content among users, one that seems based primarily on communal interests expressed, explicitly or implicitly, on the social network itself. Facebook can be mapped according to content dynamics – provided one can access sufficient data to measure it.

When one looks to measure influence across the two platforms – in the way that Klout, recently integrated with our own JournalistTweets, and the newly launched PeerIndex seek to do – it’s clear that the indivisible atomic unit of the combined networks is the individual. This doesn’t change with a move to incorporate data from elsewhere on the web. Ben Parr writes for our esteemed co-sponsor Mashable; but what leverage he gains from that particular collective, thanks to his behaviour on Twitter, Facebook, et al, he is still best regarded as one individual contributing to that blog.

Given the proliferation of new online platforms over the past decade – slowed, but not wholly stemmed, by recent macroeconomic conditions – it seems inevitable that there will never be a complete solution for determining online influence and its consequences. But that isn’t to rule out successful predictive models. The most successful will be those that predict influence across a range of the most relevant platforms for any given issue – and put the individual at the heart of their calculations.

About Paul Miller
Paul Miller is Head of Digital at Cision UK, where his work focuses on the development of Cision’s digital offerings globally as well as the digital marketing and ecommerce strategies of Cision and a number of its clients. He is the author of numerous articles published in business and consumer magazines and has contributed to several books on corporate communications and risk management.

Paul lectures at a number of UK academic institutions, including the Universities of Westminster, London Metropolitan and Cambridge. He is also a regular speaker at international industry events and conferences, where he has gained a reputation for original and provocative thinking, particularly when discussing the impact of the evolving digital landscape on communications – and on life in general.

If you like this Paul also writes on the Cision blog.

About Cision
Cision (uk.cision.com) empowers businesses to make better decisions and improve performance through its CisionPoint software solutions for corporate communication and PR professionals. Powered by local experts with global reach, Cision delivers relevant media information, targeted distribution, media monitoring, and precise media analysis. Cision has offices in Europe, North America and Asia, and has partners in 125 countries. Cision AB is quoted on the Nordic Exchange with revenue of SEK 1.5 billion in 2009.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

What are the secrets to building a sustainable community? by Rob Howard

All’s fair in love and work by Rebecca Taylor

Reaping the social harvest by Kate Spiers

The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients… by Andrew Davison

“The Talk” by Max Tatton-Brown

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

The tall and the long of it by John V Willshire