Social Scoring

Like it or not, Klout, PeerIndex and Twitter Grader are scoring your online influence. How well you score could “determine whether you receive a job, a hotel-room upgrade or free samples at the supermarket.”

On average, people score only in the teens — on a scale of a hundred — on Klout and PeerIndex. If you score in the 40s, it means you “have a strong, but niche, following. A 100, on the other hand, means you are Justin Bieber.”

However, the number of online followers or friends you have is not a determining factor — your score depends on the extent to which “you inspire those followers to take action. That could mean persuading them to try Bikram yoga, donate to the Sierra Club or share a recipe for apple pie.”

Joe Fernandez, co-founder of Klout, sees the endeavor as a kind of “democratization” of influence. “For the first time,” he says, “it’s not just how much money you have or what you look like. It’s what you say and how you say it.”

However, Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group says social scoring is “dangerous” because it does not factor in offline influence. He further notes that someone could have a high score because of a negative reputation.

And yet, some “2,500 companies are using Klout’s data.” Audi is using Klout scores as a basis for offering promotions on Facebook, and the Palms Hotel in Vegas is “using Klout data to give highly rated guests an upgrade or tickets to Cirque du Soleil.”

[Source: Stephanie Rosenbloom, The New York Times, 6/26/11]

The Wireless

Video, as it turns out, is revitalizing the radio star. “While 75-year-olds may be tweeting and 55-year-olds may be online, the video experience is something younger people are embracing in a bigger way,” says Cephas Bowles, president and ceo of WBGO, an all-jazz radio station.

The internet is also proving to be a boon to radio, Cephas says. “Digital technology and program delivery is ushering in what could be called the second golden age of radio by making radio content more accessible to more people wherever they are.”

That’s why WBGO’s performance series, The Checkout, is not only heard on the radio, but also streamed live via its website or seen live. “Everything we do is centered around broadcast, but then we branch off into these other distribution platforms because people are going there,” says Cephas.

At WQXR, a classical music station, chief digital officer Thomas Hjelm is on a similar track. “We see ourselves increasingly as a trans-media company,” he says. “We want to create a hyper on-demand experience so you can customize your radio listening experience and optimize it for your mobile device.”

[Source: Pia Catton, The Wall Street Journal, 6/20/11]

Lucky Peach

Momofuku celebrity chef David Chang is doing a reverse commute by creating a print magazine to go along with an iPad app. Perhaps even more surprising, David’s new-media excursion comes at the expense of doing his own television show, the usual route for celebrity chefs.

David instead turned to Zero Point Zero executive producer Chris Collins, who pointed him toward the iPad. Chris says the iPad enables the expression of ideas in a “non-linear” way that television doesn’t, necessarily. “Food is the entry point to a bigger story,” he says. “It’s much richer than just the stand-and-stir.”

A quarterly print magazine via niche-publisher McSweeney’s was added because, as David explains: “We wanted to capture things in writing that wouldn’t be able to make it on an iPad five-minute video.” The app and magazine are called Lucky Peach, the English translation of Momofuku.

Chris Ying of McSweeney’s comments: “Our general thought on print versus app or print versus television is that there’s not really a sort of dichotomy that people assign to it … There are things that both in video and digitally, and in print, don’t necessarily cross over. One form does something better than another.”

[Source: Kimberly Chou, The Wall Street Journal, 6/14/11]

Cool News of the Day, a daily e-mail newsletter of marketing insights, ideas and inspiration, is edited by TIM MANNERS. For a free subscription, visit www.reveries.com