Social Media Index is a Joke

Below is my response to Edelman’s Social Media Index, detailed recently at SixtySecondView.com. The index is supposed to allow for a “top blog” ranking based on influence. I’ve copied my comments from that blog post here:

I have to say, I’m extremely disappointed in this post, and the fact that so little research has apparently gone into this project to determine whether it would be even vaguely valid. If it shows anything, it’s that the people behind it really still understand very little about social media tools, other than how they benefit them directly.

I find it so disappointing, because I work not only on the PR side of things, but also the tech end through running around 2 dozen sites of my own on top of my clients predominantly being webmasters and online entrepreneurs (several at the top of their fields, including online communities).

Here are some of the fundamental faults with this idea (the same shared by pretty much every other ranking system in existence for blogs):

1. Facebook - Using Facebook doesn’t demonstrate influence in the slightest. Anyone can start an account, and add random users as friends. It doesn’t mean they actively use the account or exercise any influence over them. On top of it, Facebook isn’t valid for all niches by a long shot, and with Myspace cracking down heavily on auto-friend-adder bots, it leaves Facebook and the other social networks more open to the social media spammers (who can generate tens of thousands of friends quickly, but with no real interest in what they have to say). Facebook being more popular perhaps in Europe is fine, but that only makes it valid (but even that not really) if you’re talking about influence with a European audience, and nothing wider.

2. Twitter - Twitter’s really such a joke that I’m absolutely shocked to see it here. It’s actually discouraged quite aggressively in the blogging community, as a big contributer “blog clutter.”

3. Even the mention of Digg and Del.icio.us is amusing. The same goes for things like Technorati. If the PR community actually paid attention, they’d know that these once-useful tools are rendered worthless in gauging popularity with the overwhelming abuse that grows daily. You have paid Diggs, favorite and bookmark exchanges to improve rankings, etc. It’s sad, but it’s a reality in Internet marketing and SEO efforts, and it’s time to stop ignoring it.

4. Where are you pulling your inbound link count from?? Google, Yahoo!, and MSN can’t even come close to the same estimates (often by the thousands), so there’s no real authority source to pull this info from. Even if you went by Google’s standards because of their market share, you run into the issue that they choose to ignore and devalue certain backlinks for the purposes of their own ranking algorithms… which has nothing whatsoever to do with overall popularity and influence.

5. Google Pagerank - Obviously the PR community missed the Web memo that PageRank means almost nothing unless you’re selling backlinks on a website based on their ability to pass link juice (which Google actively discourages and is trying to weed out). It’s also incredibly easy to manipulate, and changes radically based on algorithm changes at Google’s whim… not with necessarily with changing influence. You also mentioned backlinks separately in your post. If you’re intending to count them both separately, you’re double-counting the same information, as incoming links are the driving factor behind Pagerank.

6. Content frequency tells you pretty much nothing, if you can’t vouch for content quality at the same time (and there really isn’t a way to do that… hence the issue with the entire ranking system really). Using it as a standard means that splogs have a better shot in that area than legitimate blogs.

7. Alexa - I’m utterly amazed that there’s still a living soul that gives any value to an Alexa rank. Again, it shows how out of touch the originators are with the tech side of the equation. Alexa rankings are the most easily manipulated ranking in existence, through simple URL redirects, autosurfing, and browsing your own pages. It’s reliance on the Alexa toolbar means most traffic to a site isn’t even factored into the equation, which is why Alexa has a tendency to be dominated by sites aimed at tech geeks and early adopter-types.

8. LinkedIn - If you’re only evaluating business-oriented blogs, this might not completely suck, but it’s also not used widely enough yet (even assuming no manipulation, which is highly unlikely) to justify using it as a yardstick to measure influence.

The most fundamental problem that you’re missing with this social media index is that you’re making a faulty correlation between social media and a blog’s influence, while simultaneously ignoring other extremely strong factors.

Frankly, a blog’s influence depends entirely on knowing one’s target market and what tools are likely to influence them. Your system can’t account for the fact that these tools simply don’t work all markets in even close to the same way.

You’re also ignoring things like paid advertising (increasingly popular for driving targeted traffic to content-oriented sites like blogs). You ignore it because it doesn’t fall within your limited scope of social media. Yet it leads to more targeted traffic than a lot of these other sources, and therefore traffic more easily influenced by the blogger. It’s just one example of why you can’t equate a social media “score” to the influence a blog has.

You also ignore a variety of other factors that can equate to influence, such as media coverage of the blog, interviews done with the blogger, the blogger’s level of communication in non-typical social media environments like forums and comments on related blogs, etc. It all matters. But it’s not all something you can measure in a hands-off, automatic way, with info plugged into an equation. I don’t blame you for not including these things, because of the sheer work that would be involved. But then please don’t claim to be offering an even slightly honest listing of blogs by their level of influence.

All you really ended up with is yet another list touting the same “top” bloggers (some deserving; some not so much), which in turn will simply drive even more traffic and exposure their way, showing quite directly that influence can be decided by enormously more than social media.

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Copyright 2006-2008 - Jennifer Mattern. All rights reserved
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