PBS Documentary shows the inadequacy of using number of friends as a measure of influence

PBS recently aired a Frontline Special named "Growing up Online" which looks at how the Internet is affecting youth and transforming the experience of childhood. You can watch the full program here.

The part that I found particularly interesting in light of our discussion of influencers and how to identify them, concerns a segment where they have three teenage girls talk about how befriending someone in a social network has evolved into a game that no longer testifies to the quality of the relationship. You can watch the one minute clip from the Frontline Special below:



I think this discussion shows some of the problems associated with relying on the number of friends or contacts as a metric of social media influence. Although I uderstand that Edelman is moving toward a new metric, their old model, the Social Media Index, derived a person's web influence at least partly from the size of that person's social network.

Google's inner workings explained

Since search engine rankings are equivalent to influence in this Web 2.0 world, it seems like a good idea to take a closer look at the inner workings of the mother of all search engines - Google. More than half of all online searches are currently run by Google!

This page does a great job visualizing what takes place behind the scenes when an Internet user runs a search on Google. This site doesn't discuss Google's search algorithm, but rather focuses on the logistics of running the search.