Influencing by Numbers

I have to admit that the whole thing seems amusing to me, and in some sense, screams of a scam by users against companies. As long as you can convince them you’re “influential” (whatever that means), you can get special treatment. Considering how frequently many companies have mistreated people, the idea that you can game a system (and most of these systems appear very gamable) and get special treatment has a bit of a poetic justice feel to it.

Mike Masnick entdeckt einen ausgleichenden Nebeneffekt dieser emergenten Social Media Influence Ranker (Klout, Empire Avenue, etc.)

(im anschluss bringt er auch das eigentliche problem damit auf den punkt:

The other thing that makes me wonder about these sorts of things is that I don’t use all of these different communications platforms the same way or for the same reasons. I use Facebook and Twitter was a method of communicating, not of influencing people. Yet if suddenly these random and arbitrary scores become important, do I start thinking differently about how I use these tools? Do I suddenly have incentives to get a lot more followers who will repeat what I say because it might increase my “influence” score? Personally, I don’t care enough to do that, and it would probably ruin the benefits I get out of things like Facebook and Twitter, but it does make me wonder how attempts to define something that isn’t really definable leads to a change in how those tools are used.

sprich: was als harmloser spass beginnt, und wer kennt ihn nicht, den kompetitiven reflex, zersetzt mittelfristig die symbolische struktur)

(abt. to measure is to destroy)