Fast Company and Mekanism Let You Know How Cool You Really Are
- Jul 6th, 2010
- Posted by Ron Schott
- Posted in Uncategorized
How influential are you? Who do you influence? Who influences you? With today’s Web, it’s easier to see the connections between those that are doing the persuading and those that are hearing the messages (and taking action) than ever before. Knowing that, Fast Company teamed up with agency Mekanism to create The Influence Project.
The site, which is essentially a giant living wall of faces showing those involved in the project, is an online yearbook of sorts – and you can even sort it by who’s most-popular.
Users interested in providing their data to the project can sign up in about a minute (even less if you use the Facebook Connect option) and are given a unique URL to Tweet, Facebook, blog, etc. Every time their unique URL is clicked, their influence goes up – pretty simple. For those looking to do a bit of self-promoting, all users who take part in the project will have their pictures printed in the November issue of the magazine – users with more influence will have larger pictures.
While Fast Company spends a lot of time being a kingmaker in the world of business, they started the project with one simple question (according to their about section which we can’t link to because the site is all Flash-based): Who are the most influential people online right now?
But, how do they measure, Ron? Here’s how (directly from their Flashy site):
HOW WE MEASURE INFLUENCE
The scale of your influence, and therefore the size of your photo, is based on two measures:
1. The number of people who directly click on your unique URL link. This is the primary measure of your influence, pure and simple.
2. You will receive partial “credit” for subsequent clicks generated by those who register as a result of your URL. In other words, anyone who comes to the site through your link and registers for their own account will be spreading your influence while they spread theirs. That way, you get some benefit from influencing people who are influential themselves. We will give a diminishing, fractional credit (1/2, ¼, 1/8 etc ) for clicks generated up to six degrees away from your original link.
So, who do you think will top the list? Leave your guesses in the comments, on our Facebook page, or @reply us on Twitter.
2 comments
I’d have to agree with Amber Naslund here (http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2010/07/how-fast-company-confused-ego-with-influence/). FactCompany confused influence with ego.
@Eric – Definitely. The idea is there, but when you’re relying on someone to use self-promotion to get people to the site, the experiment is inherently flawed.