Social Media Index

I write this post with some trepidation, because we have come up with a new list and lists I have learned are controversial. Some weeks ago Jonny Bentwood who runs tech analyst relations at Edelman’s London office and I were debating influence and how the Facebook phenomena has changed things. When people talked about on-line influence in the past they were often referring to bloggers and Technorati scores, though obviously influence was always more complicated than that. But now with the increasing mass adoption of Twitter and Facebook and favourites listings like Digg and Del.icio.us things have moved on. Bloggers Twitter and Facebookers Dig. Many of us are multi-platform users and so our online ‘footprint’ is much more dispersed.

So we thought we would have a bash at measuring it. Underlying this attempt is the presumption that a cumulative and comparative score can be assigned for an individual’s use of the various social media platforms that are available. That is no small presumption and the assigning of mechanical scores is a blunt instrument to say the least. How do you compare the influence of a Hugh MacLeod cartoon to a Robert Scoble tech review? Technorati say this about their methodology: “On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc”. So putting numbers to these things and assuming a level of influence from them is not exactly new.

What we have tried to do is add some new ways of measuring influence via platforms like Twitter and Facebook to blog scores. This is definitely adding apples to oranges we admit. So for example, we are placing a score for Facebook depending on the number of friends someone has. For Twitter, it is the number of friends, followers and updates. And if that is not insulting enough, we are then coming to a comparative weighting of someone’s Facebook score against their Twitter and blogging score. And the most sinful step is of course the final one where we have added those scores together and come up with a total Social Media Index. Which is an A list or a league table by another name I suppose. But we are not claiming it is definitive (how can it be with as many value judgements as I just confessed too) and we’re not entirely sure if the thesis itself will stand up. What we hope to do by this is to contribute to the debate and (and if possible) come to a community view of how you look at this. Why? Well, for us it is part of our business and I make no apology about that. Measurement is central to what we do and social media is massively powerful and we need to understand it to do our jobs. Many people do not like this and for them there is no good way of describing this.

So stage one; we created a Top 30 bloggers list from CNET Blog 100, Times Top 50 Business Blogs, Power 150 Top Marketing Blogs, Friendly Ghost Top PR Blogs and Technobabble 2.0 Top Analyst Blogs. A familiar enough grouping, but if you look along the top line you will see the new platforms we intend to combine with this listing.

Top 30 Blog – SMI weighting: 100% blogs

	Name
1	TechCrunch	98	0	0	0	0	0	98
2	Search Engine Watch	98	0	0	0	0	0	98
3	Boing Boing	98	0	0	0	0	0	98
4	GigaOM	97	0	0	0	0	0	97
5	Micro Persuasion	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
6	Scobeleizer	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
7	Scripting News	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
8	John Battelle’s Searchblog	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
9	Techdirt	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
10	Pronet Advertising	96	0	0	0	0	0	96
11	Gaping Void	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
12	Marketing Pilgrim	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
13	Online Marketing Blog	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
14	Copyblogger	95	0	0	0	0	0	95
15	Buzz Machine	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
16	SEOmoz Blog	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
17	Jonathan’s Blog	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
18	The Blog Herald	94	0	0	0	0	0	94
19	direct2dell.com	93	0	0	0	0	0	93
20	Romenesko	93	0	0	0	0	0	93
21	PaidContent.org	92	0	0	0	0	0	92
22	Secret Diary of Steve Jobs	92	0	0	0	0	0	92
23	Web Strategy by Jeremiah	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
24	Adrants	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
25	Seth Godin	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
26	Logic+Emotion	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
27	tompeters!	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
28	GrokDotCom	91	0	0	0	0	0	91
29	PSFK	89	0	0	0	0	0	89
30	adfreak	89	0	0	0	0	0	89

This next chart is the same 30 people, but now we have added individual scores for their use of non-blogging platforms and in the final column come to a total Social Media Index or score for them. Here’s how we did that:

Each person has been given a score out of 10 based upon 6 criteria:

• Blog – analysed Google Rank, inbound links, subscribers, alexa rank, content focus, frequency of updates, number of comments
• Multi-format – analysed Facebook – number of friends
• Mini-updates – analysed Twitter – number of friends, followers and updates
• Business cards – analysed LinkedIn – number of contacts
• Visual – analysed Flickr – number of photos uploaded from the person/s or about the person/s
• Favourites – analysed Digg, del.icio.us

Each score out of 10 was the given the following weighting across the categories : Blog – 30%; Multi-format – 20%; Mini-updates – 25%, Business cards – 7%, Visual – 3%; Favourites – 15% which created a total score for each category. The sum of each of these numbers created an individual’s Social Media Index. Clear as mud. And about as appetising for some I suspect, because the weighting system is massively subjective. I repeat, it is our first stab at it and we are interested in your take.

And these results are vaguely embarrassing for us too, because the conspiracy minded will have noticed that Edelman’s own Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion fame is (drum roll) number one in this (surprise, surprise) Edelman league table. And we know how well that will go down. But the fact is he is so prolific across all platforms it is what it is. Personally I think he needs to do some client work some time.

Top 30 Blogs – SMI tiered weighting
Weighting: Blog – 30%; Multi-format – 20%; Mini-updates – 25%, Business cards – 7%, Visual – 3%; Favourites – 15%

	Name
1	Micro Persuasion	29	17	25	7	2	13	93
2	TechCrunch	29	20	22	0	3	13	87
3	Scobeleizer	29	20	25	0	3	9	86
4	GigaOM	29	20	13	7	3	13	85
5	Gaping Void	28	20	22	3	2	5	80
6	Scripting News	29	16	25	4	2	4	79
7	Web Strategy by Jeremiah	27	15	24	6	3	2	77
8	PSFK	27	16	14	0	3	12	72
9	Marketing Pilgrim	28	8	15	6	2	7	67
10	Adrants	27	5	19	4	1	8	64
11	Online Marketing Blog	28	15	12	0	2	5	62
12	John Battelle’s Searchblog	29	17	0	7	3	5	61
13	Buzz Machine	28	20	0	5	2	5	61
14	Copyblogger	28	13	3	0	0	8	53
15	Seth Godin	27	5	0	0	3	9	45
16	Techdirt	29	0	0	0	3	11	42
17	SEOmoz Blog	28	0	0	5	3	5	41
18	Search Engine Watch	29	0	0	0	0	9	38
19	Boing Boing	29	0	0	0	3	5	38
20	Jonathan’s Blog	28	1	0	0	2	4	36
21	PaidContent.org	27	0	0	0	3	4	34
22	Secret Diary of Steve Jobs	27	0	0	0	0	6	34
23	adfreak	27	0	0	0	0	6	32
24	The Blog Herald	28	0	0	0	0	3	31
25	direct2dell.com	28	0	0	0	0	3	31
26	Pronet Advertising	29	0	0	0	0	2	31
27	Romenesko	28	0	0	0	0	3	31
28	Logic+Emotion	27	0	0	0	1	2	30
29	tompeters!	27	0	0	0	0	3	30
30	GrokDotCom	27	0	0	0	0	3	30

But this list just orders in a new way, a list of top bloggers. We then looked wider a-field to try and come up with a more pure Social Media Index where we have added top scorers not restricted to the blogging top 30. Same methodology, just a wider catchment group. Yes and Steve is still number one.

Top 30 social media index
Weighting: Blog – 30%; Multi-format – 20%; Mini-updates – 25%, Business cards – 7%, Visual – 3%; Favourites – 15%

	Name
1	Micro Persuasion	29	17	25	7	2	13	93
2	TechCrunch	29	20	22	0	3	13	87
3	Scobeleizer	29	20	25	0	3	9	86
4	GigaOM	29	20	13	7	3	13	85
5	Gaping Void	28	20	22	3	2	5	80
6	Scripting News	29	16	25	4	2	4	79
7	Web Strategy by Jeremiah	27	15	24	6	3	2	77
8	/Message	25	20	23	0	3	6	76
9	POP! PR Jots	21	19	23	6	2	3	72
10	PSFK	27	16	14	0	3	12	72
11	James Governor’s Monkchips	26	12	21	5	1	6	71
12	hyku | blog	23	15	20	5	2	3	68
13	Ars Technica	18	16	25	2	3	4	67
14	Marketing Pilgrim	28	8	15	6	2	7	67
15	Marketing Nirvana	23	16	15	6	2	4	65
16	a shel of my former self	24	15	15	5	2	4	65
17	Adrants	27	5	19	4	1	8	64
18	People over Process	23	5	23	5	1	5	63
19	What’s Next Blog	25	5	23	1	2	6	63
20	Strumpette	24	15	21	0	1	2	62
21	Online Marketing Blog	28	15	12	0	2	5	62
22	John Battelle’s Searchblog	29	17	0	7	3	5	61
23	Buzz Machine	28	20	0	5	2	5	61
24	Tecosystems	24	4	17	5	3	6	59
25	The Groundswell	26	11	12	6	0	4	58
26	Marketing Begins at Home	20	12	18	4	3	1	58
27	Common Sense PR	20	15	15	3	0	4	57
28	PR meets the WWW	19	12	15	4	1	5	56
29	Russell Davies	25	0	22	0	3	6	56
30	Drew’s Marketing Minute	26	5	17	6	0	1	56

So what does this last list mean? The overwhelming majority of new entrants to this more ‘pure’ Social Media Index are individuals which is probably not surprising given that corporates or even collectives don’t really use Twitter or Facebook . . . people do. Obviously each platform has different primary functions and some are much more personal (Facebook) than others. But bloggers quite openly use Twitter and Facebook and MySpace to market their blog posts and many blogs these days have widgets cross marketing the individual’s Facebook or Twitter profiles. And the personal and the professional was a line blurred for many of us years ago.

There are of course many platforms that we did not include in this, like MySpace, Jaiku and Pownce and of course this list is very English-language centric and includes none of the local social sites which dominate in countries like Korea and Germany. We may well do this in draft two depending on what people think, but for now we thought we had enough in for the basis of this to be discussed.

Obviously Jonny Bentwood and myself will be delighted to get your feedback. If people think it is worth trying to come to some sort of wider community consensus on this we can look at putting that to a wiki or even hosting some sort of debate at a later date.

Methodology

a) Blogs

Google PageRank

Google PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting to each site. High-quality sites receive a higher PageRank. The ranking uses the actual PageRank as part of its algorithm.

Bloglines Subscribers

Bloglines displays the amount of subscribers each blog has to its feed(s). Subscriber ranges were determined and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Technorati Ranking

Technorati ranking relates the authority of a particular blog (via the number of sites pointing to it). The more link sources referencing your blog, the higher the Technorati ranking. Similar to the Bloglines Subscribers value, and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Content/Frequency/Comments

Scores with strict criteria were assigned to content focus, frequency of posts and number of comments. The combined score was used as part of the algorithm.

Alexa Ranking

Alexa ranks web pages based on usage of millions of people. It is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). Ranks closer to 0 have been assigned a high number that was used as part of the algorithm.

b) Multi-Format

Facebook Ranking

As a multi-format tool, Facebook was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as MySpace could be used at a latter date. The number of friends was determined and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

c) Mini-Updates

Twitter Friends and Followers Ranking

As a multi-format tool, Twitter was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as Pownce could be used at a latter date. The number of friends and followers were combined to determine a total friends and followers score. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Twitter Updates Ranking

The number of twitter updates was determined and each range was assigned a number which was combined with the friends and followers score to give a total that was used as part of the algorithm.

d) Business Cards

LinkedIn Ranking

For Business Cards, LinkedIn was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as Plaxo could be used at a latter date. The number of connections was determined and each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

e) Visual

Flickr Ranking

For visual tools, Flickr was selected to identify a persons influence/popularity. Other formats such as YouTube could be used at a latter date. The number of pictures about uploaded about an individual or about that person was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

f) Favourites

Digg Score

The number of Digg’s an individual has had was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Del.icio.us Own Library

The number of pages in an individuals own del.icio.us library was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Del.icio.us Others Library

The number of pages of an individuals own postings that have been saved in other users’ del.icio.us library was identified and assigned a number. Each range was assigned a number that was used as part of the algorithm.

Moving forward other tools such as Reddit will be included to make the scoring more complete.

g) Flexible weighting

Each specific social media outlet listed above was given a standard score out of 10. Using a flexible weighting scale it is possible to vary the importance of the different tools available and consequently establish different total scores of individuals web influence. For the table listed above the following weightings were used:

Blogs	30%
Multi-Format (e.g. Facebook)	20%
Mini-Updates (e.g. Twitter)	25%
Business Cards (e.g. LinkedIn)	7%
Visual (e.g. Flickr)	3%
Favourites (e.g. Digg, del.icio.us)	15%

The weighting scale listed above was created through discussions with several key new media gurus. I do not anticipate this weighting scale to be the final standard and welcome everyone’s views as to what this should be.

Future copies of the Social Media Index will allow you to assign your own subjective weightings to the index to establish your own score.