And even if it can, does it matter?
Holden Page says no. And more and more I’m starting to agree.
Empire Avenue and Klout are two services that measure your social media activity and attempt to attach a meaningful number to it. Klout wants to call it a measure of influence. The problem is that, as Tom Ohle put it, “Until someone can measure sentiment, trust and reputation, influence isn’t measurable.” (Tom works at Empire Avenue.) He mentioned to me that Empire Avenue started out with the same goal, but then decided to turn it into a game instead, since all the social media “metrics” out there can be gamed anyway.
It was interesting to hear the perspective of someone who works at Empire Avenue on the fact that this attempt to measure social media influence only produces a number that may or may not be useful. At least they have turned it into a game that is (as some would have it) fun to play. Klout hasn’t gone that far (although the +K button adds a human element to the mess of statistics).
In the end, I have to agree with Holden. Go ahead and measure my social media influence or activity or clout or whatever you want to call it. I don’t really care. I’m using social media for the sake of using social media, not because I want to be validated by a number.
(This post came out of a conversation I had today with Tom and Holden on Twitter. You can read most of it here.)