What's Klout About?

Klout.com recently received $8.5m in investment to develop its social influence ranking tool. Using social media accounts such as Twitter, the folks at Klout take your followers, retweets, followback ratios and various other metrics into account when they decide your worth to society online. If 2011 is the year of influence then isn't that a bit depressing? The lovely dreamworld of the internet being a place of equals, replaced by the real world of some tweeters tweeting more equally than others. I suppose by recognising and ranking the influential we are addressing the elephant in the chat room. It is just that ranking formalises the hierarchy, and will result I fear in a widespread adoption of more mercenary and self-serving approaches to sharing online, not to say that we are devoid of them already.

And of course we are now obsessed with Listening In, and keeping an ear out for buzz whilst thinking 'if 'comte4059' is the biggest influencer in the cheese market, how can we tap into him/her?' (Dodged an Andy Gray shaped bullet there). For brands this is useful, as we must strive to find out the value of the conversations surrounding them online. However, I simply don't think that an influence grade point average can do anything but create a smug and superficial oily layer on top of the already murky landscape of social media.

A question about influence that i posted on the much derided Q&A site Quora turned up some interesting responses. I asked for '5 tips to becoming a social influencer on Twitter'. The majority of answers were built around the idea that in order to influence, you have to listen first.

Some things are as true online as they offline.

Constant Creation- Friday Memes

Two internet memes have spring up this week, and they are both great examples of how rapidly the internet will jump onto an idea and start changing it and remixing it. First there was this brilliant news clip, which has not only been given the obligatory autotune treatment but has also been played by an orchester, all within 2 weeks.

Second is the slew of Youtube, Twitter, Ebay movies parodying the forthcoming "The Social Network". Remixes happen for any movie, but the combination of it being both a movie and about an online site seems to have captured the online communities imagination. It is a timely reminder of the speed and creativity of the online community.
Enjoy the videos- good Friday afternoon viewing.

The Original


Youtube came next


Twitter


And my favourite- Ebay


And if I have piqued your interest in memes then have a look at Know Your Meme, and go to the excellent Kitten Camp.

Movies go social

Twitter was once a mystery to almost everyone, and contained little but inane updates and "overshare". However it is now used for any number of things, though most seem to revolve around Justin Bieber. One unpredictable use has been reviews. #MusicMonday, #Followfriday and also movies. And it is for that reason that Fflick is such a great idea. It scans tweets from all your Twitter friends and finds any mentions of films. You can then browse through by movie (Inception). It works because it is grabbing reviews which people were already writing, and organising them in a more logical way. This seems to make a lot more sense than taking people away from their social network to write reviews on a different platform.

The real life social network

This interesting presentation has been doing the rounds on Twitter, and is definitely worth a look. It is by Paul Adams, a "user-experience researcher" at Google, and it really gets to the heart of why Facebook "friends" are such an unnerving phenomenon.

Engaging your Tweeters

In many ways it is pretty easy to show you care as a brand these days, as with pretty minimal investment you can monitor what people are saying and respond. However Wheat-thins have taken it one stage further, and in replying to a tweet have also got some great content for a hundred thousand people to view.

UPDATE: In fact looking at the comments they may even have started a meme. Look out for "Aaah I'm out of___, My life is officially over" popping up elsewhere.

Location comes of age

via pasta&Vinegar

In the latest issue of Wired UK, John Battelle illustrates the shift in online behaviour, now that "checking in" has been integrated. We can see what people are doing, what they are buying, what they want, who they know and now we also know where they are. Location has been central to all of the biggest tech developments of the year, from Twitter places to Stickybits and Facebook Location. With smart phones to outnumber desktop PCs by 2012, location-based services are not going anywhere.

Shakespeare- A Tweet too far

The premise behind "Such Tweet Sorrow" is to embrace the narcissism and navel-gazing which defines a lot of social media and to add a new dimension to Romeo and Juliet. 6 characters progress the plot on Twitter, while there is a spotify plalist, Facebook events for Juliet's birthday and you can catch up on it all at www.suchsweetsorrow.com. As a character driven online campaign it is interesting, and as an attempt to engage young people with the theatre it is to be praised. However a similiar attempt a year ago stripped the original play of its depth and coherence by tweeting it, and this version also seems to miss the point slightly. I can't help feeling there is a bit of bandwagon jumping going on in using Twitter, when it is almost certainly not the best medium for the project. Thoughts?

Twitter Roundup #1

As an alternative to posting the "best of", this week I have decided to show some of the most popular tweets from @saatchilondon, @tompgibson and @tomcallard from the last 2 weeks. Enjoy.


New Heineken stunt fakes Real Madrid game: http://ow.ly/1laA0

The video everyone is talking about- the future of gaming: http://ow.ly/1dCv0

25 ways to overcome creative block http://ow.ly/1cH6t via @PSFK

Lessons from Lady Gaga's approach to social media http://ow.ly/1ftPy

Sexy Twitter data visualization- endless possibilities via @BBHLabs http://ow.ly/1g5Pq

Which of Sterling Cooper's pitch ideas would you rank the highest? http://ow.ly/1gel0 via @mortensax

Absolut and Jay Z- Great example of compelling content driving fans to a facebook site. http://ow.ly/1dNbC

Visualizing 6 years of facebook: http://ow.ly/1cM5r

Holy shit look as this ad!- Nissan Qashqai interactive banner: http://ow.ly/1ldB1

Clay Shirky on "How the internet is changing the way we think" http://ow.ly/1hUTG

You should watch this - Faris Yakob on "How technology changes the nature of advertising" http://ow.ly/1kUtP

Creative uses of Chatroulette, compiled by @Sergethew who I assume is dreaming up some Chatroulette awesomeness http://ow.ly/1i2ZT

Mashup my Street

The news that google will be selling outdoor ad space inside Streetview got us thinking about the google maps mashups we had seen. There have been hundreds of interesting uses of maps, but streetview seems to have been underused so far. We see potential in this street art project, we enjoyed a bit of Wally spotting (Waldo?) and the Editors album launch was fantastic, but we want to see more. So here is a list of streetview mashups we hope to see this year.

1. Off Road - The Olympic slopes have the streetview treatment, but what about supermarkets, countryside walks and slums.
2. Storylines - The ability to “explore” streetview as you would the real world means clues could be left, mysteries solved and “criminals” tracked down.
3. Race - Why race in the real world when you can do so in a virtual one? Compete to navigate across London, free from the fumes and road rage.
4. Foursquare mashup - We have seen it with tweets but why not with the “twitter of 2010”.

We are sure there are many more. The challenge is set.