Apr 20

Written by: Myra Norton
4/20/2010 7:25 AM

Let me premise this post by saying that I am a huge fan of Duncan Watts and his research, and have had the pleasure of talking with him about network science and the concept of influence.  I saw this article in Ad Age last week summarizing a talk that Duncan delivered at Advertising Age’s Digital Conference.  You’ll see that he has developed models simulating messages delivered via twitter, and is predicting that a larger group of moderately influential people can have the same impact as a small group of highly influential people.  Again, the question is how do you determine who is influential?  In this model, it is most likely the number of followers a person has.  This may seem reasonable to you, but I would argue that a person who has a large number of followers has a large reach; but that does not mean that he or she is influencing those followers.  Now, if we want to go back to the days of paying for “eyeballs,” then this model works – the people with the largest number of followers will have their tweets seen by the largest number of people.   Is that influence though?  Context is key….when talking about these ideas, be clear about how influence is defined and how influencers are identified.  There is a beautiful truth about human networks imbedded in this article.  Do you see it?  Stay tuned and I’ll tell you….

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