Is online influence measurable or meaningful?

Online influence is a hot topic right now, with companies such as Klout, PeerIndex, Empire Avenue and Kred all building online services that aim to measure the influence of internet users, in order to better target advertising dollars.

But how effective are these services really?

Does the number of followers, retweets or likes or some form of combination really identify those most likely to influence decisions and behaviours on a large scale?

Would any of these services have identified Janis Krums as an influencer of millions, before he tweeted a photo and message to his 170 Twitter followers about the plane that had landed on the Hudson River?

Would they have identified QLD Police Media as an important and influential account a few weeks before the Brisbane floods?

Would any of them have identified Rebecca Black, singer of 'Friday', as influencing an entire generation?

Influence online can ebb and flow rapidly. People go from virtually unknown to globally famous to unknown in a matter of weeks, days - even hours.

Therefore I was interested, but perplexed when I received the following email from PeerIndex a few days ago.

PeerIndex email:

I work at PeerIndex and we have a group on Australia top Twitter influencers and was wondering if I could get your feedback because you are on the list. PeerIndex measures interactions across the web to help people understand their impact in social media.

I was wondering if you could look over the list and let me know if you felt it was accurate? Do you recognise the other people on this list?  Is it missing people that you think are important?  

We would like to open up a dialogue with people in your field and think this would be useful to them (or at least start a conversation) it was accurate and interesting.

Here's the link: http://www.peerindex.com/rossdawson/group/australia_top_twitter_influencers

 

Thanks very much for your time,

I had a bit of a think about this and realised that I am an influence sceptic.

I am interested in sentiment online - whether people believe/perceive and say good or bad things about a topic. I think there's a strong future in this as a way to judge a general mood, supported by other more refined techniques.

However influence is just too hard to measure if only one dimension - online is taken into account.

Hence my reply, below:

Hi ,

 

I would love to help, however I don't think I honestly can.

I just do not understand how influence on Twitter, or on other online or offline social networks or situations, can be calculated in any effective manner.

Interactions online don't necessarily translate into actions offline and influence is generally a subtle and cumulative process - which requires multiple sources over a period of time.

For example, you tell me something on Twitter, I see something related from someone else in a forum, it gets discussed at work, I do some research as my interest is raised, then it appears in the traditional media and then I see others I trust taking a position and then I do.

The interlockings between topics and influence are incredibly complex and related to individual mental models and worldviews. Something that would influence one person will have no impact on another, people weight influence based on source, channel, frequency and relationship - and every individual has their own influence model - what will or will not change their view.

For an example (or study) of this, just watch the classic movie '12 angry men'. It is a brilliant look at how varied the influencers for different people may be.

I don't think there is a reliable way to identify influencers or put people in boxes for influence.

I find your, and other similar services, amusing, but do not see how your algorithms have accurately modeled my, or anyone else's levels of influence on the micro or metro topical level. 

Your models are simply far too simple and work on a subset of observable influences with no characterization of the individual influentiability of different people in different environments at different times - nor how long-term that influence will be.

Behavioural psychology is an extremely complex and poorly understood science. About the only way we can reliable detect influencers at any specific time or micro topic is in hindsight.

Humans are lousy at determining what is likely to be influential, other than by 'gut instinct', or through sledgehammer techniques, such as mass repetition (show the same message enough times to a broad enough group of people and some will be influenced).

So sorry, I don't know what makes people influential - chance, chemistry, repetition, a match with a particular mental model, a combination of influencers all working in alignment, or a reaction against a 'negative influencer' (a de-influencer? Someone we love to disagree with).

I certainly don't see how dividing people into boxes by arbitrary topic helps define their broader influence, or specific influence across other topics. The amount they talk about a topic isn't a good judge either, and it is always unclear whether someone 'heard' the message on a service such as Twitter.

So I don't think I can help you. Nor am I sure if your service, or Klout or the others in the space has a real business model. Though I do hope that your collective efforts expand our understanding of how connections between people can sometimes influence them.

Cheers,

Craig

What do you think?.

And for interest, here's another view from TechCrunch, "Klout and PeerIndex Don’t Measure Influence. Brian Solis Explains What They Actually Do".

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Don’t dumb me down! (guest post)

With the permission of Geoff Mason (@grmsn), I've republished his blog post Don’t dumb me down! from 21 March this year below.

I thought this was a very good post on a topic that, as increasing amounts of information and discussion only appear online, is increasingly affecting how effective public servants can be and the policy outcomes across government.

Don’t dumb me down!

There continues to be a fear of the unknown and the misunderstanding across the Australian public service about the internets – which baffles me to be honest.

Agencies continue to block social media websites, cloud based email services, and restrict mobile access during business hours. At the same time the government is pushing for greater innovation, greater mobilisation and capability of staffing, and increased staff performance while seeking to make cost reductions across the breadth of the public service.

The two are one in the same in this modern age. Social media provides the first point of call regardless of the industry for professional development, access to innovation, and in sharing how people work to increase productivity.

As a quick case study, Google + while not a social media site in itself provides a social layer which covers all its services from search through to document sharing and collaboration. The interlinked services include the Google email groups all of which requires access to not just the platform but to a Google account. The service helps tailor search results and improves the breadth of information and opinion provided by adding Web 2.0 functionality. Increasing a person’s ability to undertake a critical analysis of the information being provided.

For example, Tim O’Rielly a prominent person in many ways, including a leader in facilitating discussion, direction, and promotion of modern communications, and open and transparent government uses Google + as a key communication channel for engaging and sharing ideas of the many through an established community which actively engages in frank discussion on the merits and disadvantages of many key concepts attached a public servants work life.

Restricting access to this type of discussion during working hours means federal employees are required to actively engage in these environments during their down time - all the while trying to manage their families, their dogs, the gardening, and everything else which comes from having a life outside of the office. While I think that’s fine for myself, I don’t believe it should be expected of everyone.

As more and more key representatives access similar services as their communication channel of choice it will be fundamental for public servants to not only have access to but be encouraged to be a part of and monitor the discussions on these platforms as a cheap and effectively method for self-development and idea generation for not only their team but for their agency as a whole.

Beats the hell out of spending $2,500 to send staff along to a workshop to hear other public servants talking about something that they could be getting for free online don’t ya thunk?

In short, government agencies need soundly assess the short term risks which access to these systems pose in comparison to long term benefits which being a part of a global community could provide.

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Letting the cat out of the bag - I've joined Delib Australia

I've finally been able to let the cat out of the bag today and publicly announce my primary post public sector project.

I have been officially appointed the Managing Director for Delib Australia (and are a shareholder too). So, effective immediately, I will be working full-time with Delib in the UK and with associates and partners in Australia and New Zealand to grow and support Delib's footprint in our region.

For those who don't know them, Delib is a digital democracy company that builts online tools to help governments and other organisations consult and engage their citizens, communities and stakeholders.

The UK company has been operating for over ten years and has worked closely with both the UK and US governments.

More information is available in our media release at the Delib blog.

Delib has a strong commitment to digital democracy and is committed to supporting the Gov 2.0 and open government community, which aligns neatly with my own goals in this area.

As such you can expect my blog to continue to be commercial free, focused on Gov 2.0, social media and open government musings from me and selected guest bloggers.

In fact, I'm about to start a project of redeveloping my blog to better expose some of the resources and tools it contains - with the support of Pia Waugh.

Hopefully this will improve my blog's usefulness and provide more opportunities for me to demonstrate how to walk the Gov 2.0 walk.

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Who is watching the watchers? Civilian surveillance of government

With the widespread availability of phones in cameras and tablet devices - in fact it is hard to buy one today that doesn't include a camera - it is inevitable that people will take them out and take a snap of their most - or least favourite - public figures.

These photos and video get shared, usually online, and generally contain metadata detailing when and where they were taken.

So what is the outcome when citizens, concerned at the actions of politicians or public servant officials, begin photoing and filming their movements for accountability purposes?

David Eade (from Qld's Gov 2.0 community) has written a fabulous blog post on this topic in Govloop, Citizen Surveillance and the Coming Challenge for Public Institutions.

In this post David specifically highlights citizen surveillance of law enforcement officials and agencies - something of intense interest to anyone following cases such as the recent death of a Brazilian student after being tasered by Sydney police (by the way, for more on the rise of non-lethal law enforcement devices, watch this great TEDx Canberra video from Stephen Coleman).


What if a group of citizens, frustrated at the conduct or decisions by a government official (that is any public official - elected or appointed), took it upon themselves to organise round-the-clock surveillance of that person's movements and activities, using a group of people armed with phone-based cameras, filming only from public property (as is legal)?


What if they uploaded all these images, with commentary, to social networking sites for discussion and debate?

What if there was an organised movement, perhaps by someone like Get-Up, to release 'mug shots' of key government decision-makers in a controversial department or matter, and then invite people to photo them and report what they were doing wherever they went?

There could even be a new phenomenon known as 'public servant spotters' - people who take, publish and even trade photos of particularly rare breeds of public servants (such as Secretaries). Imagine the kudos in that community for photographing the entire SES!

This is an interesting new area for citizen power that we haven't yet seen explored very far.

In many places around the world law enforcement agents now have the legal right to detain or arrested people for photoing or videoing their activities - a course that may be increasingly hard for citizens in liberal democracies to swallow and, given the growing use of CCTV and difficulties in identifying bystanders filming a public occurance, very hard to control. Of course, in more restrictive nations people are routinely beaten or killed for filming police activities.


Is it justifiable or appropriate for governments to broaden these legal powers to all public servants?


Should these legal powers exist at all?


In a society where everyone is a journalist, able to to record and distribute video, photos, opinions and facts, how does a government and its citizens agree on what is appropriate surveillance of the activities of government officials - particularly when activities occur in public on public property at the public's expense?


I can see this becoming a growing issue for governments around the world. It is a small and simple step from reporting police activities, filming road workers or snapping photos of elected officials flirting with someone who is not their spouse to photoing and using public facial recognition tools to identify every person entering and leaving a public office.

It is then a simple matter to use social networks or Gold.gov.au to identify their responsibilities and activities. Another simple step to film or photo or text record their public activities wherever they go. Another simple step to publish their activities online, and another to use the pressure to influence their judgement and decisions.


Note this may not be the world we want, however it is the world we already have, it has just been slightly hidden behind private investigators and paparazzi.

When every citizen has a camera with them all the time, what will it mean to governments if they choose to use them?

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From open data to useful data

At BarCamp Canberra on Saturday I led a discussion asking how we can help governments take the step from open data (releasing raw datasets - not always in an easily reusable format) towards usable and useful data (releasing raw datasets in easily reusable formats plus tools that can be used to visualise it).

To frame this discussion I like to think of open data as a form of online community, one that largely involves numbers rather than words.

Organisations that establish a word-based community using a forum, blog, wiki, facebook page or similar online channel but fail to provide context as to how and why people should engage, or feed and participate in the discussion, are likely to get either receive little engagement or have their engagement spin out of control.

Equally I believe that raw data released without context  as to how and why people should engage and no data visualisation tools to aid participation in a data discussion are likely to experience the same fate.

With no context and no leadership from the data providers, others will fill the informational gap - sometimes maliciously. Also there's less opportunities for the data providers to use the data to tell good stories - how crime has decreased, how vaccination reduces fatalities, how the government's expenditure on social services is delivering good outcomes.

Certainly there will always be some people with the technical experience and commitment to take raw open data, transform it into a usable form and then build a visualisation or mash-up around it to tell a story.

However these people represent a tiny minority in the community. They need a combination of skill, interest and time. I estimate they make up less than 5% of society, possibly well under 1%.

To attract the interest and involvement of others, the barriers to participation must be extremely low, the lesson taught by Facebook and Twitter, and the ability to get a useful outcome with minimal personal effort must be very high, the lesson taught by Google.

The discussion on the weekend seemed to crystalise into two groups. One that felt that governments needed to do more to 'raise the bar' on the data they released - expending additional effort to ensure it was more usable and useful for the public.

The other view was that governments have fulfilled their transparency and accountability goals by releasing data to the community. That further working on the data redirects government funds from vital services and activities and that there is little or no evidence of value in doing further work on open data (beyond releasing it in whatever form the government holds it).

I think there's some truth in both views - however also some major perceptual holes.

I don't think it necessarily needs to be government expending the additional effort. With appropriate philanthropical funding a not-for-profit organisation could help bridge the gap between open and usable data, taking what the government releases and reprocessing it into outputs that tell stories.

However I also don't accept the view that there was no evidence to suggest that there was value in doing further work on open data to make datasets more usable.

In fact it could be that doing this work adds immense value in certain cases. Without sufficient research and evidence to deny this, this is an opinion not a fact - although the evidence I've seen from the ABS through the census program (here's my personal infographic by the way), suggests that they achieved enormous awareness and increased understanding by doing more than releasing tables of numbers - using visualisations to make the numbers come alive.

Indeed there is also other evidence of the value of taking raw data and doing more work to it is worthwhile in a number of situations. Train and bus timetables are an example. Why does government not simply release these as raw data and have commercial entities produce the timetables at a profit? Clearly there must be sufficient value in their production to justify governments producing slick and visual timetables and route maps.

Some may argue that this is service delivery, not open data (as someone did in the discussion). I personally cannot see the difference. Whenever government chooses to add value to data it is doing so to deliver some form of service - whatever the data happens to be.

Is there greater service delivery utility in producing timetables (where commercial entities would step in if government did not) or in providing a visual guide to government budgets (where commercial interests would not step in)?

Either way the goal is to make the data more useful and usable to people. If anything the government should focus its funds on data where commercial interests are not prepared to do the job.


However this is still talking around the nub of the matter - open data is not helping many people because openness doesn't mean usefulness or usable.

I believe we need either a government agency or a not-for-profit organisation to short circuit the debate and provide evidence of how data can be meaningful with context and visualisations.

Now, who would like to help me put together a not-for-profit to do this?

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