Comments on: Twitter Authority http://www.webmetricsguru.com/archives/2008/12/twitter-authority/ Web Analytics, Social Media and Search Marketing Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:53:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Who Says I’m An Authority? | The Noisy Channel http://www.webmetricsguru.com/archives/2008/12/twitter-authority/comment-page-1/#comment-2859 Who Says I’m An Authority? | The Noisy Channel Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:24:44 +0000 http://www.webmetricsguru.com/?p=4062#comment-2859 [...] WebMetricsGuru (103) [...] [...] WebMetricsGuru (103) [...]

]]> By: Nick Arnett http://www.webmetricsguru.com/archives/2008/12/twitter-authority/comment-page-1/#comment-2858 Nick Arnett Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:24:52 +0000 http://www.webmetricsguru.com/?p=4062#comment-2858 When people communicate in groups, they inevitably form social networks in which some people, typically labeled opinion leaders, have more influence than others. It is never just that simple - an opinion leader on one topic is not necessarily influential on other topics - but I don't see how an argument that a heavily used communications system is not inevitably also a system of influencing and being influenced. I would argue that any communications system that fails to account for the reality of social networks and influence is doomed to fail. People won't like it because it won't map to the way our brains work. The fact that influence is implicit, rather than explicit, on systems like Twitter makes them more interesting because explicit systems have to impose an artificial interface that inevitably affects the messages it is trying to mediate... not to mention the fact that only perfect self-awareness would allow people to accurately use such a system. When people communicate in groups, they inevitably form social networks in which some people, typically labeled opinion leaders, have more influence than others. It is never just that simple – an opinion leader on one topic is not necessarily influential on other topics – but I don’t see how an argument that a heavily used communications system is not inevitably also a system of influencing and being influenced.

I would argue that any communications system that fails to account for the reality of social networks and influence is doomed to fail. People won’t like it because it won’t map to the way our brains work.

The fact that influence is implicit, rather than explicit, on systems like Twitter makes them more interesting because explicit systems have to impose an artificial interface that inevitably affects the messages it is trying to mediate… not to mention the fact that only perfect self-awareness would allow people to accurately use such a system.

]]> By: Jeffrey Eisenberg http://www.webmetricsguru.com/archives/2008/12/twitter-authority/comment-page-1/#comment-2860 Jeffrey Eisenberg Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:00:08 +0000 http://www.webmetricsguru.com/?p=4062#comment-2860 Excellent post! Analysts love to analyze and find interesting patterns. Nevertheless, all this authority analysis suffers from not asking what strategies are being employed. For example: Bryan Eisenberg is using Guy Kawasaki's strategy. Guy has a huge following on Twitter, he reciprocates by following back. He also actively increases the number of people he follows, in order to get them to follow him back. If you look at Eric's analysis he misses that entirely. You've hit the nail on the head with "if we really want accurate measures of influence and authority - we’ll need to use platforms created and used for that purpose" Excellent post! Analysts love to analyze and find interesting patterns. Nevertheless, all this authority analysis suffers from not asking what strategies are being employed. For example: Bryan Eisenberg is using Guy Kawasaki’s strategy. Guy has a huge following on Twitter, he reciprocates by following back. He also actively increases the number of people he follows, in order to get them to follow him back. If you look at Eric’s analysis he misses that entirely. You’ve hit the nail on the head with “if we really want accurate measures of influence and authority – we’ll need to use platforms created and used for that purpose”

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