Fast Company Influence Project: just another popularity contest

Written on 12 July 2010 by
Category, Tags : Social Networks

Influence Project

The valued American magazine, Fast Company, has just launched a project named Fast Influence Project.
And it is already creating a buzz…but negatively! As most of the blog posts criticize the project, rather than supporting it.

Fast wants to set up some kind of popularity meter which will point out the most influential online profiles and the winners will make up magazine cover for November 2010.

The slight problem is that the “influential persons” will be rated over the number of clicks over a created their profile. That said! Even if this project sounds great, the method for achieving it is bogus.

In order to win this “contest”, you must be the one making the first posts, being ubiquitous on the social networks, blogs, forums, asking help from friends and families, etc…

Doesn’t that simply mean that the most influential person will in fact be the person with the greatest ego or the biggest spammer on the web?

Under such conditions, do you really want to be on the first page of the magazine?

It would have been more appropriate to use the term “popularity”, rather than “influence”.

The American Blogosphere does not really appreciate the project: How Fast Company confuse Ego with Influence

All of this reminds that the influence on internet is not measured just through clicks or fast figures. It is more complicated. By the way applications for influence tracking already exists: Traackr.

Tech Blogger.

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