Image by HowardLake via FlickrSteve Dale pointed out to me that the Sunday Times started a social 'wealth' index earlier this year. The Social List is a development along the lines of the Rich List.
Well, not quite.
The list takes four of the big online social networks (LinkedIN, Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook) and calculates your 'connectedness' and activity. It expresses the result as an index of 'social worth'. I always thought social worth was what you gave back to your community in the shape of volunteering, charity work and the like.
The list will undoubtedly appeal to the narcissists, but I couldn't help pointing it at my social networks (I belong to 3 of them, but not Foursquare). Surprisingly, out of over 47,000 people registered, I came out 27,344th. I was surprised because I almost never look at my Facebook account and rarely Tweet.
There are some obvious omissions in the social stock that the list looks at. There is no way that prolific bloggers with huge followings (including Steve), and users of other microblog sites, Ning, Flikr etc can add their preferred channels. In my mind, the most significant omission however is Google+. Google Circles was touted as the next big thing in social connectivity, but is notable by it's absence from the Sunday Times Social List.
2 comments:
Thanks for using my Flickr photo and crediting it here.
I tried out the Social List when it first started and you're right that it can only present a snapshot of someone's 'worth' or connectedness.
It's a shame that they don't detail how they calculate the worth based on the different networks.
You're right too that it appeals to the narcissistic - I was guilty of that, signing up early and being unduly chuffed that I was ranked 16th. Needless to say, my rank fell away as other people registered.
One other element worth noting: The Sunday Times and its owners have probably found how easy it is to persuade tens of thousands of people to share access to their social media accounts. I signed up partly out of curiosity to see how they would use this access.
Similar things are done by Klout and Peerindex (and I'm sure there may be others). I'm guessing the absence of G+ is most likely due to a) It's still in field trial and b) There is not (yet) an API to allow that sort of access
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