I’ve done some research into companies that monitor and measure social media, including influence analysis. They usually consider factors like links (number and quality), volume of posts on the topic, and traffic (when possible). Some also pay attention to interactions between social media and traditional media, so the blogger who’s quoted in te newspaper would get credit in the analysis.

A sudden increase in links correlated a keyword match (company name, brand, etc.) can indicate that it’s time to pay attention. The transition can be very quick, too. All it takes is one good post and the right Digg headline:
http://net-savvy.com/executive/reputation/lessons-from-walmarts-latest.html

When we use GDP statistics to get a sense of how the economy is doing, we know that we’re not getting anywhere near the whole picture. Services are undercounted, luxuries such as leisure time are left out entirely, etc, etc. But GDP is still a valuable tool, and its value is increased as it is added to other statistics.

Likewise, pageviews never died. They simply were supplemented by links. Now, things like feed subscriptions and social bookmarking sites are also available to help us get a sense of what sources are getting the most attention. This presents no new challenge–on the contrary, I think it makes the task of producing more accurate measurements much easier than it might otherwise have been.

You will never get more than an approximation–but one ought not underestimate the value of increasingly accurate approximations.

Funny, I thought that was your job.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Measuring social activity is also possible but, I think, downstream a bit.

I didn’t write about this in print. In his post, Rubel says I “took it all in,” linking to a Twitter update in relation to the exchange with Scoble. That’s all I’ve done so far — a “tweet”.

Now, there’s a slim chance I’d write about this in print, but it more likely would go into my blog, where I deal more often with this kind of topic.

Interestingly, my print column has a completely different audience than my blog. There doesn’t seem to be much crossover. My print readers are older, as you’d expect, and their origins of interest are different.

Some print readers are computer novices, or are those who strictly see technology as a tool and don’t want to immerse themselves in it. I also have lots of technically oriented print readers, but they are what I call “practical technicals” — they work in the IT shops and engineering pools of Houston’s businesses, many of them energy-related. My blog readers are younger and more apt to be avid early adopters and fans of geek culture.

So my influence is spread between two types of readers, I think, in two different media. If I write about Scoble and Rubel in print, I have to explain who they are. I don’t have to do so in my blog. This amplifies my influence into multiple spheres, but you could also argue that it diffuses it.

What’s badly needed is some killer app that aggregates everything you say and do online — a kind of You Central. There are some startups trying to do that — Houston’s own Natuba.com is one — but I think a real solution will come from some company with a large reach and the technology to make it easy to use and ubiquitous. Facebook tries to do this, but as Rubel says, it’s largely a walled garden, a la the old AOL. I think Google could easily do it, using Google Reader as the underlying architecture, or Yahoo or Microsoft, maybe even Apple.

Once we have a way to corral everything creators generate online, we can really begin to measure influence. Until then, it’ll be all guessing games and intuition.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that . . .