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5th Most Influential New Yorker??

Yet another attempt at quantifying influence. This time NYC style.

July 21, 2008 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 19 COMMENTS

Really? (Of course not is obviously the answer.)

According to this list on NowPublic (using TinyURL to offset the linkbaitishness of it) that purports to be "a detailed barometer of the most public news influencers of today’s digital world" I am the fifth most influential person in this fine city. As Brian and Rex have written it's quite simply link bait from a company who is otherwise known as that site who sends you those weird Flickr emails where they ask to use your photos and then ask you to become a member to let them (who does that?).

A couple things about the list: It's fun to be on these things but there is no real merit behind them. Interestingly enough, though, they seem to have exposed their formula for the rankings (it's about 3/4 of the way down the page) and includes basically how much stuff you do, not how much you actually influence anyone.

As a side note, this seems to be the major issue with any discussion about influence: It's not usually about influence and tends more towards things like reach and frequency. I made this same argument two years ago and not much has changed. Influence happens on a personal level and changes depending on topic. One person is more influential on computers and another on music. This is how the world works, which is one of the big flaws with all these attempts at calculating influence.

On top of all this, I'm kind of annoyed because rather than linking out to people's sites, they link to a member profile which they've created for each person on the list. While I've written and asked them to take control of my profile, I haven't heard anything back yet. This generally feels like really bad form.

With all that said, the idea of a personal influence list is kind of fun and I thought I'd go through the list (and off it), to think about some people that influence me:

First those on the list

  • 6. Anil Dash: Just about everything he writes is worth reading. He's really freaking smart.
  • 10. Loren Feldman: He's a little crazy (which I said to him last time we had drinks), but he makes me laugh and says a lot more really smart stuff than people give him credit for.
  • 15. Jason Kottke: How one man can read so much is beyond me. There's nobody better.
  • 16. Rex Sorgatz: I'm pretty sure he's the only person I follow on twitter that I've never met in person.
  • 18. Brian Morrissey: Brian's a good dude and writes about the ad industry.
  • 23. Kyle Bunch: Kyle and I have grandiose plans to take over the online sports universe as soon as we find an extra five minutes.
  • 40. Peter Rojas: He's a really smart dude and I like what he's up to at RCRD LBL.
  • 46. Allison Mooney: Me an Alli met awhile back at a random coffee morning when Russell Davies was in town. She's awesome and will be co-hosting a party with me this Friday (which I will write up tomorrow probably).

So, there you have it, the 8 people who influence me out of the 50 New Yorkers they chose (I mean, I'm sure I've been influenced by some of the other people, but these are the ones that stood out for me).

And now, five more New Yorkers that influence me on the internet who didn't make the list.

  • Rick Webb: Sure he has a tendency towards diatribes, but there aren't that many people who know how things work better than Rick. (And I don't just say that because I technically work for him. Also, while he doesn't actually live here, he spends enough time to count.)
  • Faris Yakob: Rule number 1, if someone has as much hair as Faris, make sure you listen to what they have to say.
  • Chet Gulland: Chet is a buddy of mine. He's got awesome taste in just about everything and he's super smart.
  • Colin Nagy: Colin keeps a low profile, but our at-least-weekly breakfasts (that's right, in person) are a constant source of stuff (music, news, ideas, etc.).
  • Aaron Rutledge: Aaron runs Poke NY (along with some other fine folks) and is always good for a link or some tech advice. Plus he cooks up a mean burger with bacon and cheese mixed in with the meat.

So I'm sure I've missed a ton of people, but I thought it was at least a worthy exercise. Lists are dumb.

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COMMENTS

1Rick Webb

Haha diatribes, huh? That's a recent thing.

These lists fascinate me. I think that a lot of them are automated in interesting ways that limit the obviousness of people like me who use multiple screenames - I've been mulling over cancelling my other screen name - lizstless - and changing it all to like RickWebb or something to make it more clear that it's me, but i sorta enjoy that people have to work a little bit to find anything other than my blog and the TBG stuff.

I also think it's funny I know FAR more of the people on that list in real life than online, despite basically living online.

Maybe there's a new trend here - influence engine optimization. We should use the two of us as a compare and contrast study and engage in some IEO and see what happens.

July 21, 2008

2Rick Webb

Ooo and another thing - I have FAR more weekly readers on TBG.com - like 2,000 - and Livejournal - like 500 - than I do on my aggregated site at rickwebb.net. This might be something you'll have to contend with too now that we're bubbling some of your posts over there. I wonder how this works with someone like Caroline M, for example, where most of her online presence is at CNET.

July 21, 2008

3Noah Brier

Ha, I love it. IEO. Totally. I know that there's a bunch of SEO guys who are always trying to mess with the AdAge 150 list.

I agree, the different screen names make it more difficult and I'm sure played into it. Interestingly enough, on the profile they made for me (and didn't give me control of), they didn't include a link to my blog.

I think that company/media thing is a whole separate issue. In your case (or Caroline's case), it becomes even more difficult to differentiate the person from the company (as they should be). While you're able to build up more influence than ever under the name of the company you work for, this does ultimately act as some sort of limiting force since your essentially sharing the fame. (Obviously it goes both ways, a company allows an individual to get exposure they might not otherwise get.)

Anyway, it's all quite odd in the end and I stand by my real point (which I don't think I actually wrote) that influence is not quantifiable.

July 21, 2008

4Rick Webb

Yeah, I think my comment about Caroline/CNET or Me/TBG is that humans would have to be involved beyond pure algorithms. Doubly so with multiple screen names.

Of course, this is all very analogous to branding and SEO, and one of the first rules is to have one name everywhere, which you do well. I changed my twitter name today. Let's see if that helps next year.

Or, you know, moving to New York might too. ;)

July 21, 2008

5Colin Nagy

I've been thinking about the distinction between "soft" and "hard" influence. The latter is directly correlated to how much traffic one person can drive somewhere, there are also those who have a big -- but less public -- impact on a given topic (media, culture, music, or whatever). This is obviously much harder to wrap a metric around.

July 21, 2008

6Loren Feldman

I am outraged! This is complete bullshit Brier and you know it. There is no way in hell that you are 5 better than me. Yes you have your hair, but I'm taller. This list was probably rigged by you and you influential friends. You owe me 5 drinks next time I see you.

July 21, 2008

7Noah Brier

Careful Feldman, or I'll drop you to 15.

July 21, 2008

8Noah Brier

Colin, I think what you're talking about is closer to that engagement thing the ad world has been trying to wrap it's head around. I've found from experience that a link from a contextual site with a smaller audience is better than a link from a non-contextual with a larger one.

July 21, 2008

9Philip James

Noah

Colin and I actually mined some 'straw' metrics on exactly that: how much more valuable was a link from a targeted site than from a more generic one.

At Snooth, we tracked articles written about us by several outlets, which spanned from Decanter (UK wine mag, and clearly focussed) to Techcrunch (big, but no one cares about wine there).

On average, and taken across more than 10 sites and some thousands of users, 9 months later, the wine publications referred users that were over 3x as active as the generic, but much larger sites.

Philip
[clearly #51 on that list...]

July 21, 2008

10Noah Brier

That's awesome data, thanks Phillip.

July 21, 2008

11Noah Brier

Oh, and in response to Rick:

Your comment reminds me of this quote from a blog entry I read this morning: "Finally, markets and Google both suffer from one severe defect: they are highly effective at identifying two separate things as the same, but very bad at specifying the difference between them." I'm not exactly sure why, but it feels like it's related.

July 21, 2008

12Jackie Johnson

Frankly I am surprised I am not on there. Just kidding... but weirdly enough I'm good friends with Rex we should all grab drinks talk about the internetzz and how much I love your sister. ha .

July 21, 2008

13Andrew

I get those NowPublic emails a lot, and I always reject them now. I am really annoyed with (though I get how well I am sure it works to drive signups) the fact that I need to become a member in order to approve their use of my photos.

July 21, 2008

14Mikej

I just love how faris has become a new yorker already....

What does it take a bagel and a hot dog and your in

July 22, 2008

15Faris

Thanks brother, back at you, with no hair requirements ;)

Mike my man - I think technically you just have to live here ;)

July 22, 2008

16Armando Alves

This kind of behavior (being referred on lists and expecting a linkback) goes into what Rohit Bhargava calls Egommunication:
http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2008/07/the-rise-of-ego.html

July 22, 2008

17Alan Wolk

To Rick's point, increasing my personal IEO has been a challenge since moving from anonymous blogger Tangerine Toad to Alan Wolk. Can't reclaims hundreds of blog comments, but I've been slowly changing things like my Twitter name over so that everything is standardized.

There are also two other fairly well-known Alan Wolks (which is odd in that I'd never known another Wolk until about 5 years ago) - and so we battle it out for Google supremacy, though I am now lapping them both, what with my multiple touchpoints and all ;)
(One is a very senior exec at DuPont and the other is a guy who sues airline quite often.)

As for "Egomunication" I often wonder if there won't be a sort of Ponzi scheme effect- there are only so many people interested in marketing/advertising/PR/social media and the like, so each new person linking to the "A-Listers" gets an increasingly smaller piece of the pie.

July 22, 2008

18Marci Ikeler

If I told you that we ordered those burgers pre-made from Fresh Direct, would Aaron get removed from the list? Although he did almost lose his eyebrows in the process of cooking them. :)

July 24, 2008

19Chet

thanks for the shout out. looking forward to drinks tonight where i have ambitions to crack the top 5 most under the influence list. see ya later.

July 25, 2008