Time for a grumpy thought from me…

Today a friend on Facebook shared the fact that he’d just been ranked highly on a “Top 100 Social Media Influencers” list.

Now I’m sure many of you will have seen these lists, they’re generally a pretty simple calculation which equates influence to noisiness on social media (fatal flaw number one).

Obviously we’re in a broadcast era and it’s all about leveraging the medium, but it frustrates me that we can equate noise with influence. A case in point, I’ve featured on a bunch of these lists over the years, with titles such as “Top 25 Cloud Influencers” and “Top 100 Enterprise IT Influencers.”

But there’s the flaw, just because I’ve had cause, in the past, to opine extensively on these topics on social media, doesn’t mean that my opining actually influences anyone else to buy something or change their thoughts around a piece of technology.

So why don’t people call these lists what they are: “The Loudest People on Social Media” or, perhaps a little more charitably, “The Most Engaged People on Social Media.”

Is it just me or do others also feel a little queasy at these self-serving and cliquey lists?

And, just as an update, and to prove the point, the day after I posted this thought on LinkedIn, I received the following Tweet:

Congrats @benkepes you are ranked #36 on this week’s #Cloud Global Power 100 Influencer List. rise.global/the-cloud-soci… via @risedotglobal

Ironic, huh?

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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