Measuring Activity, Influence, and Klout

As always, these are my own thoughts on this topic and not official Intel positions. Intel does permit me to blog and tweet, but not to misrepresent that I speak for the company on any topic. In addition, Intel does measure the impact of our writings, but I have no control over how those measurements are taken nor what tools or sites are used to do so. These thoughts are based solely on my own personal use of the tools that I mention. I have no affiliation with any of these tool makers other than as a user. I have only used the free versions of these tools and not the paid versions. Finally, note I am not a professional statistician nor market researcher and you should do you own analysis before making any decisions.

Recently, I have read a fair amount of discussion on whether one's Klout is related to one's Social Media influence. You may want to read Online Influence Is More Than Just Social Media Activity and 5 Reasons Why Klout is Total BS. Both articles are fairly negative on calling what Klout measures "social media influence". While I have no specific allegiance to Klout's specific measure, I'd like to address some of the criticism.

To do so, I first need to relate a story. About 30 years ago I was in college math and computer science. At the same time my Father was in graduate school studying creative writing. To finance us he wrote some articles, one of which was about a hunger study. The statisticians who did the study wanted to identify the causes of hunger and they measured a bunch of variables they believed that were related to hunger (such as the number of low-birth weight babies) and then grouped the data into a matrix on which they performed a "principle components analysis". Out of that analysis came a list of numbers that were measures of how the data correlated. They labeled the most significant of those numbers "hunger". Now, if you accept their assumptions on whether those numbers were related to hunger and that hunger was the most important factor, then calling that number "hunger" is valid. However, if you don't, then it isn't.

Therein lies the point. Mathematics is like that. Everything is determined by the assumptions one makes and how one labels them. If one accepts the assumptions, the conclusions can be drawn (and proven). If one doesn't, the conclusions don't hold. The numbers Klout puts up are no different.

Social media influence is intangible. No one can actually measure it in a way that everyone agrees with. In fact, I think you would find it would be hard to point to an example of social media influence and get broad consensus as to whether it was or wasn't a good example. Thus, any measure of social media influence is likely to be controversial. A certain amount of this controversy can be applied to any definition of social media influence.

Moreover, there are many people who object to any measuring of these intangibles. The answer to them is simply that it is our labeling that makes these intangibles real. Many abstract and intangible terms are simply our agreed upon convention of what it means. The fact that they mean slightly different things to different people does not prevent us from using them. This holds true for social media influence. We don't need universal precise consensus to make it real. It is real and measurable because we choose to make it so.

The end result of this, if Klout measures as it claims to the number of users who take action after reading a tweet or status update, then it is measuring something related to social media influence. You might quibble about details, but in the end that is what you are doing, quibbling.

Social media influence is also ephemeral. Although a tweet or FaceBook status update may last indefinitely, its ability to cause action is distinctly temporary. I have seen some measurements of how long after a tweet and how long after a status update, users clicked on links. For tweets, the fall off of activity was measured in hours, with essentially no actions taken after a day. For status updates, the fall off of activity was measured in days with essentially no actions taken after a week. You can easily verify these measurements. The reason for this fall off is obvious, if you tweet something, it is a very short time before that information disappears off the recipients' timelines. This is particularly true for the most influential readers who are the ones who most likely have the most connections and thus the fastest moving timelines.

Given that fall of of activity rate, any time longer than a couple of weeks should capture nearly all activity related to a specific tweet or status update. Since Klout appears to use a 30 day window, that definitely captures responses to all recent activity. Moreover, if someone hasn't responded to something you have written in the past month, how influential can you be over that person who responds at most 12 times per year?

Another way of looking at the ephemeral nature of social media is to see the effect of absences. I had two recent ones that are pretty indicative.

Ouch, your Klout score has been falling lately. Share more content and engage with your network and your Klout score will rise!

Most recently I took a short trip that kept me off twitter for a few days and which resulted in me tweeting slightly less for about a week total including the time I didn't tweet at all. The result was pretty clear, not tweeting took me out of the consciousness of some of my followers. Even when I started tweeting again, it took awhile before I was getting responses. Some of the people I had been regularly conversing with me took awhile to return to conversing and some of them have not returned yet. The level of conversation grew as my number of tweets grew.

Before that for much of last year, I had a longer absence, where I was tweeting only sporadically, perhaps as infrequently as once a month. During that absence, only a few of my most committed followers kept in conversation with me. And, similarly, to what happened after the short break, only as I began to tweet more consistently and more intensely did people return to engaging with me. Moreover, some of the people with whom I conversed before that long break have never done so since.

So, while two incidents do not make a scientific survey, they do provide some evidence that taking a break from tweeting does reduce one's influence, at least if one equates influence with the ability to generate responses. It seems clear to me that consistent and frequent engagement are the keys to keeping one's audience's attention. Moreover, it seems quite likely that audience like trust is difficult to build and easy to lose.

Thus, if Klout really emphasizes one's level of activity, it is not clear that activity is not related to influence. Additionally, if Klout is actually able to measure response to that activity, then calling that measurement influence is not a major stretch of the term. It is fair to want to distinguish activity from influence, but it is not clear that one can divorce them entirely and if one wants to be influential one needs to participate in some activity that drives that influence.

NewTwitter v. TweetDeck and Lists

As always, let me start by reminding you that these opinions are simply my own at now official statements by Intel.

I've tried the #NewTwitter. It is better. If I were a casual user of twitter, I can't imagine wanting anything more.

However, I'm a twitaholic. I'm a retweet addict. I'm a junky for my stream. I can't get enough twitter. I follow over a thousand other tweeps, well as best I can.

Therein lies the rub. By the time I was following 50 or so other people, it got to be more than I could handle. I was drowning in too much good information. Now, the problem is at least 20 times worse.

Part of the solution is simply giving up. Don't get too attached to your stream, you can't hold onto it. Appreciate what it gives you, but let the part you've missed go by. It will anyway.

However, there are other tools that can help get your stream to you in a better fashion. In particular, I'm talking about lists and tools that bring up multiple lists as multiple columns. If you really want to immerse yourself in your stream, I highly recommend this as the way to do it.

The first thing I recommend is finding a multi-column client you like. My personal favorite is tweetdeck. However, many people I know use seesmic. For a while I used a client called peoplebrowsr.

Now, what is a multi-column client? A multi-column client is a twitter viewer that shows several different twitter streams at the same time, in columns.

Different streams you ask? That's where twitter lists come in. You take the people you follow and divide them up into lists. Some useful categories are those tweeps you follow because they relate to your work. Others you follow because you like to chat with them for personal reasons. Maybe another group are your news sources.

I have lists like that: Originally, "security-all" were all the people I followed who talked about computer security. That was until there were more than 500 of them and I had to add "security-2". I have a separate list for "online-safety" who are those tweeps who give security advice. I have yet still a fourth list "parenting" for tweeps who give parenting advice. I also have a "law" list and one for "CIO/CISO" tweeps.

I also have a list of "Intel" people. Those are folks I work with, or who often talk about Intel, where I work. Since I have spent most of my life as a computer person, I also have a "programming" list.

Then, there are personal lists "personal" and "potential".

As you see, you can slice and dice the people into as many categories as you like. You don't even need to strictly divide them. I have several people on more than one list. That helps keep their tweets from scrolling off the screen.

Now, I don't necessarily recommend that you have quite as many lists as I have. Yes, you can finely divide your world, but even with a multi-column client, you can only see so many lists at one time. I have a nice high-resolution monitor and I can only fit seven columns on the screen at once. Moreover, you can't really watch even seven columns. Well, at least I can't. So, if you make too many lists, you will find yourself following some less than you like.

But, the point is with seven columns on the screen, each representing a different aspect of what I am interested in. My twitter world is very rich for me. I can almost always find something in one of the columns that is relevant, pull up the link in the tweet, read more in depth, and then if I like fire off an RT.

And, the different columns because they represent different aspects, never get completely filled even by the most aggressive tweeter. The most such a person can do is hog a column (or two) and other tweeps still get my attention. Which is nice, I can follow people who tweet a lot and still hear those still small voices of the quiet ones too. I like that.

Thus, there is your recommendation for the day. If you find following your stream too hard, divide into smaller pieces so you can more easily digest it. A multi-column client with some lists is one way to do so.

The Retweet As A Calling Card

Anyone who has followed me on twitter knows that my favorite form of communication is the retweet (or RT for short), sometimes with comment and often without. This is not just that being an introvert, I have little to say. It is actually intentional and planned as a firm believer in the aphorism, "On Twitter, Love is spelled RT."

For those of you not addicted to RTing as I am, let me explain this plan, so you can consider whether it is something you want to adopt also.

The primary purpose of a retweet is to share information. Always remember that. When you retweet something, you are taking that meme of information and reinforcing it. Therefore, the first rule in retweeting is to pick things to retweet you wish you had said.

However, thinking of retweets as sharing information can give you another clue as to what you should retweet. Pick items to retweet that you think people might not have seen otherwise. You probably have some people that you follow that most of your followers do not. In fact, unless you have a small tightly knit group of friends you tweet with, most of your followers probably don't follow all of each other. The exceptions to that are the top-ranked tweeters and celebrities you follow. You can expect that those people are generally followed by anyone who is interested in what they say.

When you think about that, that means you can pretty freely tweet anything written by some one with a thousand or fewer followers. You will probably be introducing those people to new potential followers.

On the other hand, retweeting everything that your favorite celebrity or news source tweets, even if you are adding comments, is probably not introducing your followers to something they don't know. Still, if you have someone like @techzader, you can also easily retweet them, as long as you are selective. The top tweeters generally put out lots of information and much of it goes by too fast for us ordinary mortals to follow. So, if you find an interesting tidbit or two from their stream, you can certainly retweet it and not worry about filling your stream with non-content.

Okay, now that we've established that you can retweet your unique people any time and the well-known people, when they say something that catches your attention. Let's look at this plan.

It starts by reviving an old tradition, "the calling card". Back in Victorian England one used to leave a calling card when one wanted to visit with someone. This was the precursor to the modern day business card. The point of the calling card was to catch the recipients attention and to introduce oneself.

One can use the RT the same way. It works because when you retweet someone, your mention of them gets directed to their attention. Most people, especially those whose business it is to tweet, keep track of when they are mentioned. Which probably means this technique will be less effective on celebrities, since they probably aren't tracking every time they get mentioned.

So, assume you would like to get to know some specific tweeter. One simply finds something interesting they are writing about--and if they aren't writing interesting stuff, why are you getting to know them? Now, that you found the interesting tweet, go ahead RT it, either with or without comment. If you are really brazen, follow up the RT with an @ message to them. However, even if you aren't feeling that bold, simply wait. Often when you RT something, someone has written, they will thank you for it. You can then reply to that. The exception here being if the tweet you are retweeting is something they they have retweeted from somewhere else, you are more likely to get the thank you from the original author.

If the first retweet doesn't work, wait a day or two and try again. If repeated retweets don't work, don't continue to pursue the matter. There are people you won't reach no matter how hard you try. Better to concentrate your efforts elsewhere.

Note that you don't have to just retweet to get introduced. Calling cards were used for any time one wanted to visit. Retweets work the same way. If you want to reinforce the reason why you found the person interesting, or renew an acquaintance that is fading, retweeting another tweet is a perfectly acceptable way to do so.

In fact, if a person has an interesting stream, there is no reason not to retweet them regularly. If you make the right connections, that will become a reciprocal pleasure and both of your audiences will grow.

To see the effect of this, consider how you found this. Chances are that you read this because you follow my tweet stream which is almost entirely RTs. However, I don't worry about that, because I try to pick carefully what I retweet, by tracking that which interests me, with the hope that others will also find it interesting. And, if you didn't find my stream directly, it is probably because the person who retweeted about this blog entry finds my stream interesting. So, it's all good.

Why I Didn't Quit Facebook

As always the opinions expressed in this posting are solely the author's and do not reflect any stances held by Intel.

A recent article by @mediaphyter asked the valid question about whether those who were threatening to quit Facebook over privacy issues actually ever quit. While I don't believe I actually ever threatened to quit Facebook, I certainly found the privacy issues compelling and considered it at least for a while. Moreover, I certainly posted enough tweets about the topic to be considered to be an agitator, because even if I tried to conscientious about being balanced, there was certainly more noise and more news on the outraged side than the opposite.

Thus, in all fairness, I must ask myself if I am being hypocritical by not quitting. At the same time, those of you following along at home can ask yourselves the same questions. Which of these answers ring true and which are mere rationalizing? Do you have reasons for quitting or not quitting that vary?

First, I have little to lose by quitting Facebook. Literally. I have perhaps a dozen or so friends on Facebook. Now, while there are some Facebook connections that I don't have contact with in any other way, I don't actually connect much with any of them. On would hope that most Facebook users would have more to lose if they lost the Facebook connection. (I would certainly feel that way if we were discussing Twitter, losing those connections would definitely be felt. The obvious presumption is that most people would feel the same way about their Facebook accounts. Asked that way, it is understandable why many people are stuck, which is what prompted one of the comments in the article above about "people talking about quitting not really wanting to do it".)

The next question the seems most relevant is whether I would act hypocritical after I quit. If one is quitting in protest, one should not continue to perform acts that line the pockets of the entity one is protesting against. That means that upon quitting Facebook, one shouldn't visit web pages hosted on Facebook. That would prove to be a much stiffer challenge. There are definitely sources like Cruel's Not Cool and F-Secure that I visit quite often by clicking links on Twitter. It would be difficult to exclude those sources from things I want to re-tweet simply because I was protesting Facebook's privacy policies.

However, the question that is most pressing is whether Facebook's privacy changes have swung back far enough to be acceptable. All of us have probably read fundamentally negative reviews like this one in eWeek. The key point in the article is that privacy now requires an opt-out decision where it used to be opt-in. That is that privacy used to be an easy default to get and now it takes more work.

Having actually tried the most recent changes to the privacy settings, I can report the pages to do so seemed very easy to navigate. Yes, if you want fine-grained control like I do, it isn't simply a one-click operation. However, one-click did get a surprising number to be close enough. Being relatively technically savvy, I will not make that a blanket pronouncement. The one-click solution is not one-size-fits-all, and the options underneath are still numerous and not necessarily obvious. Still, it did seem possible and not overly difficult to return Facebook to an essentially private service.

More important for me was the ability to opt-out completely and conveniently from the instant personalization. That is not only a privacy but a security issue. I consider identity theft and spear-phishing, using available information to formulate a more credible fake message, to be very significant problems that I don't want to be exposed to unnecessarily. Therefore, I keep most personal information off the web, with the exception of the resume information I publish on LinkedIn. Being able to restrict information from being given to applications that I am not using was a priority and one of my major concerns. Fixing that item was key for me in deciding not to abandon Facebook.

Does that make me happy about the changes in Facebook? No. The change in Terms-of-service which eroded my privacy was not welcome. Any changes that appear to erode my rights are not welcome.

Moreover, it certainly added to my levels of concerns and actually raised my consciousness about privacy and security threats I had not previously considered. Like most people, I would be quite satisfied to be blissfully ignorant as long as doing so isn't putting me at risk. Making those risks apparent may be good for me in the long run, but they are not pleasant to discover.

Therefore, I did not quit Facebook. I am not planning on doing so. However, I am still not happy about the reasons why it was worth considering quitting.

Toppling Facebook

Recently Facebook's changes to their privacy policy and privacy controls have made many people upset. Enough so, that there are quite a few who are leaving Facebook at least temporarily.

Just deactivated my FB account.less than a minute ago via DestroyTwitterShalini
0ph3lia

Others are facing the prospect of monitoring and changing their Facebook settings on a frequent and regular basis just to maintain the status quo.

I bet I will have to change my #faceboom #privacy settings. Again. It's becoming a weekly event, no?less than a minute ago via TweetCasterGwynne Monahan
econwriter5

This flap has inspired an almost endless stream of "how to adjust your Facebook privacy settings" or "how to delete your facebook account" tweets, blogs, and articles, such as this one by Senator Al Franken.

This article on wired goes so far as to suggest that an open source alternative to Facebook be built. As a programmer, this caught my attention. The technical challenge isn't that great. In fact, it falls into the domain of what open source is actually best at, capturing, recreating, and evolving software. This makes it from an implementation viewpoint a very do-able project.

What seems to be hindering the start of such a project is the impression that Facebook is too large to challenge. That is the impetus for this post. Facebook is certainly large and it does have an installed user base that gives it tremendous leverage. That allows it to do many things. Including its current attempt to "monetize" all that user information.

However, the one thing it doesn't allow it to do is anger and drive away its users. Users on the internet are actually quite fickle. Facebook is not the first site to have an overwhelmingly large user base. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that Google was considered to be irreplacably the core of the internet. More similar to Facebook is MySpace which saw a huge following erode very quickly. Going back further, there was a time when "everybody" had an AOL account. Prior to that, there was CompuServe. I don't need a show of hands to see how few of you even remember those two.

The history of the internet tells us one thing: Something new will eventually replace whatever we consider to be key today. It is not a question of "if" it is a question of "when". The internet game of "King of the Hill" is just like the child's version. No one stays on top forever. Therefore, don't be intimidated by the number of users Facebook has. That's just a potential market to be tapped by something better maybe even just something fresher.

Now, I can't promise that an open source version of Facebook will be an instant success. More importantly, I can't promise you that you will get rich building it. In fact, if you want to truly tap the ope source community, you should put those dreams aside.

However, I am willing to assert that if you build a set of open protocols that allow different providers to create mini-Facebooks and link them together, you will gain traction, just like the web did years ago, by allowing sites to put up pages that referred to each other via URLs. A grass roots project is possible. Some people will even find ways to put very innovative services on that scaffolding, and some of them will make significant money.

The one thing you need to do if you want to replace Facebook with an "Open Book" that respects peoples privacy is to actually build something. That is the key thing. As is often said, actions speak louder than words. Real software will trump vaporware. If you create something interesting, you will find people to collaborate with. Trust me. I've been there. It happens.

In fact, if you are serious about it, you might want to join diaspora. or look into really simple social networking at hedgie or boonex from Australia These look like groups committed to building an open source Facebook replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't others. (That's the down side of open source development, it often produces a lot of starts that never take off before building something that is good enough to have a cohesive faction that supports it.)

And on that note, you will have to excuse me, I have some software that I need to write.

DISCLAIMER: Although, I tweet and blog under the name @intel_chris and do so to promote Intel's products. These ideas are solely mine. Moreover, nothing written above should be considered a commitment by Intel (or me) to build, fund, or support building any specific project, nor to buy or use any such product or service should it get built.

A plug for Pluggio

A few months back, @mistygirlph reviewed what is now pluggio on her blog. Given that I was looking for something to "schedule tweets" to space my tweets out over the day more I tried it.

I like it.

It hasn't become my primary way to access twitter, but it does do some things very well.

Before I go too far, I must stick in the required disclaimer. Although, I work for Intel, I tweet only my own opinions. Nothing I say should be construed as a recommendation on Intel's behalf.

One of the things that works best about it, is that it runs in your browser. That wouldn't seem like an advantage, but it actually is. The reason why that works well, is following a link becomes very easy if you used a tabbed browser, simply click on the link and the text pops up in a new tab very fast. Much faster than from a standalone twitter app. Moreover, when you close the new tab, you are back on twitter.

Another thing that pluggio does really well, is how it handles your inbound and outbound messages. In particular, it has a special category that holds just the tweets you send out. You might not think that is useful, but it really is. If you are trying to figure out if a tweet got sent or not in times of twitter problems, just look at the tweets you have posted and if it is there, you sent it. They also do the same thing with in-bound and out-bound DMs, so you can see just the ones you've received or just the ones you've sent. I really like both of those features and for those alone, I will keep using it.

However, it's main claim to fame is reading RSS feeds and helping you get that content into twitter. It is very easy to follow RSS feeds with pluggio. More importantly, pluggio helps you turn those articles into tweets. If you are trying to build a following by offering links to interesting content, this can be a big boon.

The second feature it offers is scheduling tweets. It has a couple of ways of doing this. A schedule at a specific time option, and a rolling tweet option. If I used pluggio as my primary interface to twitter, I would probably use the rolling tweet option as my primary way of RTing people, as it helps you avoid overloading your stream by sending too many tweets at the same time and then having dead air later.

One feature, pluggio offers that is in several other clients is the ability to manage twitter, facebook, and other social media accounts from a single client. If you want to put your message out across several sites at once, this might be the solution you need.

Now, it is time for some balance. There are two things I get from my primary interface to twitter that I don't get from pluggio.

The first one in multiple visible columns. I have my tweetdeck open all the time, with about 8 columns visible. That really helps me keep up with the "way too many" people I follow. Pluggio only shows 1 column at a time.

The second one is "tweet shrinking". Since most of what I do is RTing other tweeps, I often have to shorten their tweets. Again, there is a tweetdeck feature that gives me a head start on that and pluggio doesn't have that.

The last thing I should mention is that pluggio is "nagware". The free version is truly no cost, but it does gently remind you after a while that to support pluggio's development some people need to get commercial copies. It's reminders are gentle though and not too intrusive.

In the end, you will need to try pluggio before deciding whether it is something you will like or not. I did and I do.

Confessions of a Serial Retweeter

Hi, my name is Chris, and I am a Serial Retweeter. I last Retweeted 15 minutes ago.

That's how the introductions in 12 step programs go. Right?

Hmmm, serial retweeter, that sounds bad doesn't it. Oh, well, it is accurate. It is what I do, what I like to do on twitter. And, this in my own way is my apology for that.

My apology for not being quite as engaging as I perhaps should be. Not writing as many "hello, how are you?" notes as I should. Apology for not writing as many "thank you" notes. Apology for letting conversations drop once someone has posted the answer to a question, or at best retweeting their answer.

However, please take my retweets as my indication of appreciation, interest, and respect. There are many out there already saying what I want to say, and saying better than I could. My retweeting of them (of you!) is my way of getting my own message out. And, yes, I do occasionally add a tidbit or to onto a tweet to make a small point. Or, write a follow up tweet. Still, all-in-all, I will let my shyness keep me from posting too many things on my own. Apologies for that.

The same goes for blogging. There are already great bloggers out there. Ones that say important things, Ones that are thoughtful. Ones the get their points just right. Ones who are convincing and motivating and persuasive. Ones that are witty or up-lifting.

There are also great reporters out there. Ones that find the news stories. Ones that analyze them. Ones that bring just the right insight to them. Ones the get the news to us quickly.

Neither of those things can I compete with. I'll never be the first to find some news, nor will I be the one to distill it into a bit of insight that motivates people to change in a way that improves the world. So, yes, I will blog some. However, more often, I will take the easy way out, and simply RT a reference to what someone else has written. Again, apologies.

However, hopefully, it is actually the better way. You will get the same news and you will get the same insight and same motivation and inspiration, just from someone who writes better.

So, while I am sorry I am not a better writer and I am working on being more engaging, I will continue to let those who do the hard work of creating great content do what they do best, and I will continue to find items I like and retweet them.

And, now, I will sit down and let our next 12 step participant speak.