This last week, The Boston Globe covered Klout scores in the “Ascent of Social-Media Climbers.” The article by Beth Teitell shows how important digital reputation tools have become in the “real world.” Teitell states that individuals have even been fired for low reputation scores.
As a social media user (GovLoop and beyond), how do you feel about reputation ranking tools and point systems?
- Do they create a digital caste system?
- Are they useful tools for measuring ROI?
- Do they encourage quantity over quality (in content/connections)?
Tabitha,
Hi. I hate to agree on the digital cast system. Each area has people who are good, those who adapt and those who struggle. Sports, computers, driving, archery, etc all have “natuals”, thos who try and those who can not do.
Social media is newer making the playing field more level. Use of avatars and login IDs remove gender, age, cultural bias.
Yes sadly – computers foster quantity over quality. Its easier to cut&paste than to create. At first computers helped with quality but now there are so many re-tweets and re-posts of the same material.
I think they are useful for benchmarking. Here’s a post I did looking at most of the SF gov accounts in terms of their influence scores.
I’m not to sure about this since it many cases scores can be driven up by a lot of spinning. One approach is pursued in the UK by rol – http://nicstreatfeild.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/uk-councils-social-media-reputation-index-for-january-2011/, which may be a way?
Mick http://greatemancipator.com
Recently when Wired published a negative article about ADM Stavridis and Twitter, his followership increased. So it goes back to the old saying that even bad press is good press. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/james-stavridis/