Does Fast Company Really Understand Influence?

There’s no question social media has given rise to a number of things we couldn’t have imagined just a few short years ago.  One of the more interesting things we’ve witnessed is the changing dynamics of individuals as “influencers” based on superficial metrics like how many Twitter followers or Facebook friends one has. Businesses and organizations have always strived to have a positive influence, but when we look at the role that social media has played in breaking down barriers and catapulting individuals into “influencers” the waters become a little murkier.  After all, what is influence?  

To me, influence is not about the number of retweets or votes in a contest, it’s about following and engaging with people whom I genuinely respect for their opinions and outlooks on topics that I care about.  This is the kind of engagement that has opened me up to new friends, new possibilities and exposed me to new ideas – none of which are things that I believe can be measured with metrics or algorithms.  That’s why, as I was peeling back the onion on Fast Company’s new Influence Project, I was surprised with what I saw.  

Truth be told, Fast Company is my favorite magazine and is the only magazine I still subscribe to and receive in the mail.  When I read about an experiment they were going to do a couple of issues back with the viral marketing company Mekanism, I was intrigued.  But in watching the execution of the campaign over the course of the past week, it has completely missed the mark. Fast Company set out to turn their readers into marketing machines using their personal influence to get their friends to click, register, and boast their own influence.  Think of it as an online yearbook where the cheerleaders and prom king and queen have the largest pictures, based solely on their popularity.

Here’s how it works: users interested in providing their data to the project can sign up in about a minute and are given a unique URL to Tweet, Facebook, blog, etc. Every time their unique URL is clicked, their influence goes up – the concept is pretty simple. But, the scale of your influence, and therefore the size of your photo, is based on two measures (as outlined below by Fast Company):

1. The number of people who directly click on your unique URL link. This is the primary measure of your influence, pure and simple.

2. You will receive partial “credit” for subsequent clicks generated by those who register as a result of your URL. In other words, anyone who comes to the site through your link and registers for their own account will be spreading your influence while they spread theirs. That way, you get some benefit from influencing people who are influential themselves. We will give a diminishing, fractional credit (1/2, ¼, 1/8 etc ) for clicks generated up to six degrees away from your original link.

Fast Company started this campaign with a simple question – who are the most influential people online right now?  But, online influencers and interested bystanders alike are asking, who cares?  Would you tweet your followers, email your friends and update your facebook status in order to be considered an influencer?  What could Fast Company do to turn this into less of a gimmick and more about why influence matters? Does online influence really matter?