Via TechCrunch and PR 2.0…

Measuring individual influence in Social Media is as coveted as it is elusive. While many tools claim to calculate authority, it is the definition of influence that requires clarification in order to grasp the relevance and differences of existing tools and services.

For the sake keeping this discussion on track, let’s define influence. According to Merriam-Webster, influence is having the power or capacity to cause an effect.

San Francisco-based Klout is no stranger to measuring influence on the Social Web. The company launched at SXSW Interactive 2009 to help Twitter users discover the voices that the world listens to (on Twitter anyway). Essentially, Klout measures influence at the topical level, sorting individuals who demonstrate the ability to drive action within respective social graphs when discussing particular subjects.

Today, Klout is announcing its most significant release to date. In addition to measuring authority on Twitter, the company is releasing a new, intelligent Twitter List engine that identifies and ranks the top 25 influencers for any topic of interest and produces a new, qualified, and ranked list as a result.

For example, here’s list of the most influential people on the topic of technology:

And, according to Klout, Public Relations:

Prior to the official release of Lists, Twitter provided Klout with early access to its List APIs. As such, Klout was able to immediately address one of the early frustrations with Lists – the ability to modify a list started by someone else without having to recreate it. The new system now adds the means to introduce any list into Klout’s analysis engine and instantly view the analytics of each person on each list. Users can then either follow that list as is or customize it using Klout’s topical search and ranking feature to ensure that the list is inclusive of all necessary authorities.

Klout’s ability to add context to a person’s influence is critical for businesses that want to leverage influencers in spreading the word about their companies or products.

Klout’s algorithm involves three sophisticated stages of semantic calculation. The first, described as “True Reach,” measures influence between each and every relationship, evaluating the engaged audience versus total audience.

The service also employs a secondary metric known as “Amplification Probability,” which documents the likelihood of a specific tweet spreading beyond the primary network through retweets as well as generating a response from the immediate audience. The service then examines the percentage of actual mentions or retweets shared by a particular audience as well as the percentage of the originating messages generated a user’s actions.

Finally, Klout factors the “Network Value,” which measures the influence of those individuals who follow the original user and their propensity for sharing their content, which contributes to overall authority.

Overall, Klout’s scores place a significant emphasis on the number of clicks a person drives through the links they share on Twitter, thus truly measuring action associated with each update.

Twitter Lists impact not only influence, but also create an opportunity for a new layer of earned authority. Whether or not you inspire measurable action directly, the creation of highly accurate and meaningful lists is significant and also helpful to the Twitter community. The ability to identify and assemble proven authorities on relevant subjects allow followers to stay connected to verifiable and trustworthy sources and the voices, information and trends that in turn influence their activity. More importantly, Klout empowers followers to further modify lists to not only track activity, but also determine opportunities for future engagement and behavior tracking.

After all, influence is not in the eye of the beholder, it is the ability to inspire action and also measure its effects.

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From PR 2.0

Over the years, Twitter search was plagued by an unbelievable flaw. Deleted tweets remained in Twitter’s search index and thus, would appear in the search results regardless of the conscious act of manually removing the tweets from your personal stream. Believe it or not, this problem remained constant much to the dismay of many power users. To my pleasant surprise, Twitter has finally rectified this problem and has officially removed deleted tweets from its index.

Now that Google and Bing are channeling Twitter search results, it’s widely suspected that Twitter had no choice but to remedy this enduring problem. Imagine if your deleted tweets ranked among the top results in Google or Bing? Obviously privacy is a primary concern and this is a step in the right direction. However, privacy on the social Web is an oxymoron of sorts. Once a Tweet is published for example, it is indexed by many other third-party services, networks and applications. And, even if you delete a Tweet, it still may reside somewhere else. For example, if you stream your Tweets to Facebook and Tumblr, obviously you’d have to delete the updates across multiple platforms. But, the other challenge is that there are several other services that pull tweets where they may also reside once deleted.

Either way, to officially have deleted tweets removed from search results is a welcome update that is way overdue, but valued nonetheless.

Oh, and make sure to check out Collecta for real-time search results…it not only indexes the live twitter feed, but also the social web to reveal activity around keywords as they appear online. (Note: I’m a tech adviser to the team.)

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Via PR 2.0

Last week, while attending Blogworld Expo, I logged into Twitter to catch up on a few DMs. Upon login, I noticed that something was just a bit different. My home page featured a sizable banner that announced the “beta” release of lists.  While I knew the release of Twitter lists was imminent, I didn’t expect it so quickly.

Essentially, waves of people are receiving access to lists, offering an effective form of contextual curation to follow and stay connected to groups of individuals who align with or inspire your personal and professional interests. It links to you to those you respect and admire and those you inspire.

You’ll notice that the link to your “tweets” has been replaced with “listed” – a link that takes you to the lists created by other individuals where your feed is currently streamed.

As I’ve been on the road, I haven’t had a significant opportunity to create the lists that I need and require to ensure that twitter engagement remains rewarding and productive. To date, I’ve maintained separate accounts to accomplish similar tasks. However, clicking on the “listed” link will allow you to see the groups in which your feed contributes.

Perhaps one of the most compelling new features is that you can join any public list to receive the same feed and insight, whether or not you follow the included individuals. Maintaining lists enables Twitter to scale, offering a meta form of intelligent, yet manual, filtering to ensure that you can increase or decrease the volume of information vs. noise on any given subject of interest.

Creating a list is exceptionally simple. Either click on the list of people that you already follow or jump to a particular profile of interest and click the “list” icon to either create a new list or add the desired individuals to an existing list. Lists can be made public or private. As mentioned earlier, public lists are open to following by others. Some of the most interesting lists, in any industry and covering any topic, will exist and its those list generators who will earn the appreciation and respect of the Twitterverse.

Once you start to create and maintain lists, they’re stationed on the right-hand side of the home page for easy viewing.

For more on the subject, please read Robert Scoble’s review of Twitter lists.

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Now available! (click below to purchase the new book or poster):

Hat tip to Dave Winer who tuned me into a local story about a cupcake truck that broadcasts its whereabouts via Twitter.

Cupkates Truck is the Bay Area’s first mobile cupcake truck. Like my good friends Mike Prasad the Kogi BBQ truck in Los Angeles,Cupkates alerts followers to its next stop.

Ariel Waldman, if you’re listening, make sure they make an appearance atthe next cupcake camp!

Updates: @cupcakestop is live in New York

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Sourced from PR 2.0

Twitter rolled out a friendly and instructional 101 series designed to help users create a strategic and effective presence as well as spark and foster a collaborative community in the ever-maturing Twitterverse. Additionally, for those marketers, brand managers, communications professionals, and new media consultants who have painfully and exhaustively attempted to explain Twitter and its benefits to executives, co-workers, or clients, this guide is your saving grace and for some, their golden ticket.

Co-Founder Biz Stone explained the rationale behind the creation of the guide, “Many are seeing a wide variety of businesses using Twitter in interesting ways to create value for customers and consumers. As a result, we’re often invited by businesses and organizations to talk about Twitter and how it can be used to better engage with customers. The results demonstrate how customers are getting value out of Twitter and suggest techniques businesses can employ to enhance that value.”

He continued, “Twitter 101 is a suite of web pages that explains our findings. There is also a downloadable slideshow available as a PDF that’s more of an overview which folks can use to give presentations within larger organizations to teach others about Twitter. We’re focused on enhancing value across Twitter in general—these documents are just a first step.”

Its format is deceptively simple, but packed with valuable information that bridges functionality and potential with instruction and comprehensive examples that span a variety of businesses and marketplaces. What’s constant, though, is Twitter’s desire to help you, and also help you, help others.

The guide covers:

- What is Twitter

- Getting started

- Learn the lingo

- Best practices

- Case studies

- Other resources

This business survival guide provides a comprehensive overview, and quick tips along the way, that provide just enough data to pass the baton to you in order to apply and connect what you’ve learned to your business – triggering creative ideas to change the ingredients to make it more appropriate for you.

Twitter 101 is available as a post, slide show, or printable document here.

Instead of approaching Twitter as a place to broadcast information about your company, think of it as a place to build relationships.

Also, please read: Make Tweet Love, Top Tips for Building Relationships on Twitter.

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by Brian Solis

Flickr has finally joined the party for seamlessly connecting and sharing pictures directly to Twitter. Up until now, Twitpic and yfrog have dominated the Twitter stream for pictures, simply because they provided a tremendously easy system for snapping and uploading pictures to Twitter from mobile devices.

While I’m an avid photographer, I am not however, an avid camera-phone shutterbug. Up until recently, if I were so inclined to proactively share an image from my Flickr Pro account, I would do so manually. However, an age-old feature within Flickr has finally received a long overdue update, the ability to not only “blog this” image, but also “tweet it.”

Now, simply clicking on the “blog this” button above the image, you can now connect your Twitter account in addition to your blog. In doing so, it takes you to another window where you have roughly 120 characters remaining to frame the tweet. Flickr automatically provides a shortened “flic.kr” URL and embedds it into your Tweet to save time and effort.

To append your Flickr account with your Twitter credentials, click here.

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Read more from Brian Solis:

Blog: PR 2.0
Book: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Social Map: The Conversation Prism

by Brian Solis

Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference (#140conf) will be taking place at New World Stages in New York City on June 16/17.

While the original scope of the event was to explore “the effects of twitter on: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising and (maybe) Politics”, the scope of the event has expanded and we will be covering these topics and a lot more. #140conf will be taking a look at twitter as a platform and will be taking a look at some of the industries which have been disrupted by the advent of twitter.

The schedule reflects the great variety of the subject areas we will be exploring and discussing at #140conf. The speakers represent a “cast of characters” whose presence will help define this event. I’m joining Tony Hsieh of Zappos on stage.

You can save $195 by using code “SOLIS” before midnight Tuesday. Register here.

Follow @140conf on twitter for updates.

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Read more from Brian Solis:

Blog: PR 2.0
Book: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Social Map: The Conversation Prism

Last week Twitter removed its auto-follow feature, deeming it “disingenuous.” What’s that mean, exactly? And since Twitter is still allowing celebrities and high-profile users use the auto-follow feature (upon request), why can’t the rest of us?

Let’s take a quick step back and look at what the auto-follow feature is. As a Twitter user, you’re able to follow other users in order to receive their updates on your home page or your mobile phone, depending on your settings. If you follow another Twitter user, it’s most likely because you care about what they have to say and you’d like to keep up with their updates. But sometimes, you follow other Twitter users for reciprocity reasons. It’s the nice thing to do, to return-follow, when someone cares enough about what you have to say in order to follow you.

This reciprocity was one of the primary reasons behind adding an auto-follow option, which Twitter extended to a test group of users for a trial run. But the test run apparently didn’t go so well, as Twitter has decided to pull the auto-follow feature for all but high-profile users, stating the following, reports WebPro News:

“We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes this activity disingenuous.”

When Twitter says that the auto-follow feature is being used for disingenuous reasons, it’s most likely saying that users are taking advantage of the auto-follow merely to follow more users and potentially get more followers. But unless you’re hoping that other users have added the auto-follow option, there’s no point in simply following a bunch of users in hopes of receiving a return auto-follow. Users already follow a bunch of others in hopes for a follow-back, and that’s irrevrant to the auto-follow feature. Twitter has also installed a follow limit depending on your follow/follower ratio in order to curb this particular behavior.

But is the noted disingenuous use of the auto-follow feature the real reason behind Twitter’s decision, and it it Twitter’s place to decide that a feature should be pulled just because some users are using that feature in a way that may be different from its intended function?

If Twitter is in fact taking away the auto-follow feature to discourage spammers, then Twitter should just say so and leave it at that. Removing the feature for beta testers and enabling it for celebrities and high profile users actually sends the wrong message. These celebrity and high profile users are most likely to be the most disingenuous users of all.

Even if its not intentional, high profile users have the most followers, and will therefore follow the most if thy enable the auto-follow features. This also means they’re highly unlikely to be able to engage the bulk of the users they’re following, as the sheer mass of them is overwhelming without hiring someone to help out (also disingenuous, eh?).

The silver lining in this all is the fact that third party applications still offer auto-follow capabilities, which run through Twitter’s API instead of directly from Twitter itself. Check out applications like Tweetlater in order to set up auto-follow features and more.

note: image credit nndb