My colleague Jeremiah Owyang sure ruffled some feathers with his post claiming that the Golden Age of tech blogging is over. Aside from being a mentor and a tireless analyst, he’s also a long-time blogger. His words over the years helped blaze the trail for blogging and ultimately the micromedia bonanza that he believes is contributing to the erosion of long-form social prose. In his article, he quotes good friends Loic Lemeur, Ben Metcalfe, Ben Parr, Francine Hardaway, Chris Heuer and Dave McClure. Their perspective is always interesting. And, his post also drew telling comments from some of the best known names in tech blogging including Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable, Sarah Lacy, Marshall Kirkpatrick, and Dylan Tweney, executive editor at VentureBeat.

His points are worthy of consideration. Kudos to him for sparking this conversation…feels like old times.

I believe that in brevity there’s clarity. While a chapter in the ongoing development of tech blogging is certainly coming to an end, in the overall story, it’s (finally) growing up…as it should. See, tech is more important than a locale. It’s more important than funding or personnel shifts. Its impact on culture, society, business, and human evolution is more profound than the pundits who usually cover it. Evolution is a good thing…and I believe tech blogging is merely undergoing a form of digital Darwinism of sorts.

I recently wrote about my thoughts on the state and future of blogs, which is of course far grander than the world of tech blogging. And as you can see, blogging is alive and clicking.

Yes, micromedia, video, and social transactions/actions are breaking through our digital levees and causing our social streams to flood. And, yes, Flipboard, Zite, and the like (get it?), are forcing our consumption patterns into rapid-fire actions and reactions. You have a choice. You are either a content creator, curator or consumer. You can be all of course. But, think about this beyond the mental equivalent of 140 characters. What do you stand for and what do you want to become known for? The answer is different for each of us. But, content, context, and continuity are all I need to learn, make decisions and in turn inspire others.

I can assure you that the right voices will find the right platforms to escalate the genre and continue to influence all forms of media and those who create it. Watch what happens in 2012. It’s part survival of the fittest and survival of the fitting. I’ve got my eye on some of the names you know as well as many that you don’t (but soon will).

This part is important…If we assume that human beings can only process bytes instead of depth we are confined to competing merely for the moment. That is a game for the AOL’s of the world. What’s changing right here, right now is the players, not the game.

In fact, this is the time to compete for attention by not just feeding it forgettable snacks here and there, but enrapturing it through value, direction, and insight. Do the work no one else can make the time to do. There’s always a market for intelligence…it’s just a matter of which market you decide to pursue.

I believe the next Golden Age lies in syndicated context (yes it’s a play on words) and like a multidimensional chess board, we will compete for attention on several different fronts (playing their game, their way) while expanding reach in the process. There’s tremendous value in trusted content. The secret lies not in character count, but in perspective…seeing what others can’t and doing what others won’t. Just don’t lose sight of who you are and why you’re here. You’re part of the reason we’re here in the first place.

#AdaptorDie

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In part two of a series of conversations discussing the state and future of social media with Chris Beck, founder of 26dottwo (@26dottwo), we review the viability of Facebook as an advertising platform. The discussion brings up elements introduced in my recent post introducing the concept of The Last Mile and how everything begins with the First Mile. We also review the ever-thinning attention span (Media A.D.D.) and ideas introduced in Part Two of the Hybrid Theory Manifesto.

This series was filmed at the new video studio at KickLabs SF where I spend time as an entrepreneur in residence.

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Social Media is rooted in relationships, the dynamic interaction and collaboration between real people. We learned and continue to learn how to communicate in public forums, evolving our personal views on privacy and uncertainty as we transform from digital introverts to social extroverts.

This is our industrial revolution and its reward for participation is relevance. The socialization of online societies democratized the publishing industry and equalized influence.

The Social Economy

Socialnomics is the study of what I refer to as the social economy. The truth is however, that the true method for studying the exchange, growth, depreciation, and path of social capital is a more human form of social sciences, those that embrace the methodologies and tenets of psychology, anthropology, and sociology.

As the social economy swells and continues to flourish, many of us are abandoning the forums and systems where businesses held the illusion of control in favor of communities where we dictate the level of value we give and take. Accordingly, brands are turning in our direction. We are, after all, the keepers of social capital and with it, we make valuable decisions and also impact and influence the decisions of others. We’re now joining and creating our own communities online where we create, shape, and steer attention democracies.

Individually, we’re realizing the power and potential of social media. Collectively, we’re changing how we learn, interact, discover, and share.

The rise of Social Media resembled a global celebration of freedom and empowerment.  In many ways, this was a Summer of Love and Twitter was our Woodstock.  Every genre creates a movement. The 80′s championed the free market economy. The 90′s gave birth to the Internet revolution. The 2000′s engendered a more social Web.  We carry the spirit forward as we seek incremental milestones that deliver meaning and rewards, evolution is perpetually imminent.

What’s next?

In order for a value cycle to maintain relevance and usefulness, it must perennially pull innovation and insight from the edge and bring it to the center.  The time to close the chapter on our Summer of Love nears, but we will forever hold it sacred. The edge is already coming into focus.

The Attention Economy

Attention is indeed a precious commodity. Perhaps more scarce than we may realize or care to admit. It is why we are migrating towards the employment of attention dashboards to help funnel the content we attempt to follow. Essentially, attention dashboards are any one of the three screens (mobile device, PC, TV) within the Golden Triangle (mobile, social, real-time) and is usually experienced as an activity stream, TweetDeck, the Facebook Newsfeed, FriendFeed, any feed reader, etc. The attention dashboard is where we focus and it is how we keep our finger on the pulse of the social web – the conversations and connections that ultimately represent the human algorithm.

To have any hope of connecting with discerning consumers in the social web, we have to gain visibility and momentum across individual attention dashboards, where, when, and how they’re tuned.

To do so, the marketing infrastructure and methodology must shift from a broadcast framework to one of informed engagement and interaction without compromise or skepticism – all the while placing functional and meaningful forms of metrics and analysis. Identifying, understanding, and compelling new influencers requires an ongoing investment in listening, analysis, and cooperation.

It is this practice that lays a promising foundation for implementing a social CRM (sCRM) or Social Relationship Management (SRM) infrastructure supported by established workflow, processes, and governance.

Attention, however, is only thinning. To help, the social Web is on the verge of realizing the potential and corresponding benefits of real-time filtering technology. Gaining presence on attention dashboards will test the creativity, perseverance, and quality of those who choose to willingly participate.

As we traverse the dynamic landscapes defining the social and attention economies, we realize that something much more powerful is required to earn ongoing attention in the social web. One of the primary principles and virtues of earning attention over time is to establish connections and interactions rooted in trust or the constant acts of earning it.

Individualized engagement that attempts to deliver value contributes to the kindling of trust.

The New Trust Economy

I am me, but I already know that. Who are you, why should I care, and who am I (to you)?

Social Media is ours and it’s up to us to determine who we let into our social graph. We are the gatekeepers for our attention and in order to earn our awareness, you’re going to need to know a bit more about me than my age group, gender, level of education, marital status, and household income. More importantly, you’re going to have to dig a bit deeper than the keywords I may use in online conversations.

It’s the difference between demographics and psychographics. It’s the difference between listening and monitoring.

The social economy now gives way to something much more substantial. The next stage in the evolution of new media is the trust economy. Whereas conversations served as the currency of social media, conviction credence, and value serve as the market for trust economics.

While brands weigh the scalability and ROI of investing in relationships, as a consumer, I can assure you, a reasonable attempt at fostering relations is a noble and respectable endeavor.

We’re no longer limiting relationships to friends, family and associates. As our comfort and interaction increase in social networks, the relationships we forge within each reflect our interests and aspirations.

The curated micro networks we forge within each respective social network serves as a trusted community. Those who can participate or permeate these trust communities must first earn the prominence of what Chris Brogan and Julien Smith call Trust Agents – those individuals who are deserving of your time and attention as demonstrated through their actions and words.

It is these concentrated communities that ultimately form the premise for a much larger and more meaningful human network – a collection of trust networks that represent the market and exchanges for your focus, investment, participation and ultimately your actions.

With time, our contribution to the state of the social, attention, and trust economies is measured by reciprocity, recognition, value, and benefaction.

Trust is earned and its stature is representative of our collaboration and contribution over time. If the Social Web is an ocean, trust funnels into distinctive and distinguishable rivers.

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Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with “Viral Marketing Scientist” Dan Zarrella on special projects related to Twitter. His focus on social science and psychology as it relates to new media and online interaction and behavior is in line with my philosophy and approach to understanding and documenting socialized media.

Zarrella recently debuted TweetPsych, a sophisticated system that uses two linguistic analysis algorithms (RID and LIWC) to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets. He also adapted the service to analyze a site URL and the content on that page to create a list of the 50 Twitter users who’s profiles are psychologically aligned with the site you provided. It’s a fascinating service for those actively seeking to expand their contextual networks.

One of the most actively discussed aspects of Twitter is the art and science of retweets.  Retweets, in my opinion, are one of the most sincere forms of recognition and validation, empowering users to pay it forward through the recognition of noteworthy content. According to Dan, retweets also serve as the foundation for assessing the qualities of viral content, “You don’t spread ideas just because they are “good;” you spread them because of some other trigger or set of triggers has been pulled in your brain. We can now compare millions of viral ideas to uncover the building blocks of contagiousness.”

Aside from my very simple advice to leave room in your tweets for people to add RT and their username, “120 is the new 140” and to also tweet something worth retweeting, Zarrella studied the science of retweets over a period of nine months to discern the attributes and characteristics of tweets that spawned memes and those that didn’t. His sampling group was not insignificant either. He analyzed roughly five million tweets and 40 million retweets to discover the art and science of getting retweeted.

He published the results in a 22-page report, which you can download here.

Zarrella’s initial finding estimated that 1.44% of all tweets are ReTweets. From there, he recognized other important common traits for successfully getting retweeted.

Links are the Currency of Twitter

According to Zarrella, links were three times more prevalent in RTs over normal tweets, 19% to 57%.

The study also found that the URL shortener used also had an effect on the potential resonance of tweets. For example, bit.ly, ow.ly, and is.gd, were much likelier to get retweeted than older, longer services, such as TinyURL.

Choosing Words Carefully

Pandering or soliciting for retweets might seem tacky, but asking politely for a retweet actually works according to the research.

The top 20 retweetable words and phrases include:

1. You
2. Twitter
3. Please
4. Retweet
5. Post
6. Blog
7. Social
8. Free
9. Media (note, most likely tied to social media, which demonstrates the interest in related tweets and links)
10. Help
11. Please Retweet (personally i’ve found that adding “please share” or “pls share” to the tweet helps as well)
12. Great
13. Social Media
14. 10 (The blogosphere and Twitterverse share significant interest in anything with a “top 10″ list
15. Follow
16. How to
17. Top
18. Blog post
19. Check out (a call to action indeed inspires action and traffic)
20. New blog post

Chatter isn’t Worth Sharing

As I’ve shared numerous times, literally answering Twitter’s question of “What are you doing” engenders uninteresting tweets. The research found that verbs ending in “ing”were among the least retweetable words. Although, I’ve personally found in my research that “reading,” “reviewing,” and “looking” trigger significant activity. People generally want to know what has your attention at the moment and if they can look at something through your eyes, it helps spark retweets and clickthroughs.

The least retweetable words:

1. Game
2. Going
3. Haha
4. lol
5. But
6. Watching
7. Work
8. Home
9. Night
10. Bed
11. Well
12. Sleep
13. Gonna
14. Hey
15. Tomorrow
16. Tired
17. Some
18. Back
19. Bored
20. Listening

Don’t take intelligence for granted

While many suspect that simple language is preferred, retweets contained an average of 1.62 syllables per word with normal tweets boasting an average of 1.58 syllables per word. It may seem insignificant,  but per a Flesch-Kincaid test, comprehending RTs required 6.47 years of education, while normal tweets require just 6.04.

The Novelty of Novelty

One of the most interesting aspects of viral content is its freshness, insinuating that the newness of the content was a significant factor in RTs. For example, Zarrella created a measure of novelty by counting how many times each word in his sample sets occurred.  In random tweets, each word was found an average of 89.19 times, while in the ReTweet sample each word was only found 16.37 other times.

It’s Not Just a Figure of Speech

The analysis of words indicated that nouns and third-person singular present words led to the proliferation of headline style tweets that triggered retweets. The pervasiveness of verbs and proper nouns were also factors. To observe this activity, Zarrella used Part of Speech (POS) tagging, an analysis technique in which an algorithm is used to label each word in a piece of content as a specific part-of-speech–noun, verb, adjective, etc.

The Power of Punctuation

The power of punctuation isn’t necessarily relegated to grammar or sentence structure. The use of punctuation could also represent the difference between a tweet and a retweet.  85.86% of normal tweets contained some form of punctuation  compared to 97.55% in retweets with colons leading the way.

Of the most common punctuation types found in retweets, colons, periods, exlamation points, commas, and hyphens led group with semicolons ranking last. In fact, Zarrella observed that the semicolon appears to be the “only unretweetable punctuation mark.” What’s interesting however, is that the question mark ranked second-to-last. I would have guessed that questions would have been more prominent in RTs, but after further thought, I would imagine the any tweet containing a question would trigger more answers than the RT of the original question.

There is no “I” in ReTweet or Tweet

LIWC measures the cognitive and emotional properties of people based on the words they use. Applying this lexicon to tweets and retweets, LIWC analysis shows that Tweets about work, religion, money and media/celebrities are significantly more retweetable than tweets with negative emotions, sensations,
swear words and self-reference.

The Attention Aperture: Time and Day Count for Everything

I have also studied the time/day significance applied to what I call the attention aperture (the state of attention and its ability to be captured). I believe that the results vary depending on the nature of the content, specific to whether or not the nature of the Tweet was professional or personal in nature.

Among the most usable findings from Zarrella’s study is the analysis of when individuals appear to be more susceptible to retweeting. According to the research, the window for retweets is at its widest between 2 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. (however, I’d like to know if time zone played a factor in RTs). Match the time to the most active days for retweeting, in this case Thursday and Friday, and surely, we have identified the attention aperture for RTs.

In my research, I found that educational, news-focused, or work-related tweets found its greatest traction between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. Pacific time. I suspect that this range casts a wider net reaching professionals during work hours with the East Coast and Europe prompting RTs that bring it back to the attention of those on the West Coast as individuals prepare or arrive at work. As such, I asked Dan to create a new graphic that visualizes days and times in a way that might be easier to reference.

This study was as fascinating as it was informative.  But I needed a personal touch to close close the chapter and remind us that there are real people behind the data and the tweets that were analyzed. I asked Dan to share what he learned from his research, and he readily obliged, “My favorite takeaway from the data is that while having more followers definitely makes it easier to get more ReTweets, even if you don’t have tens of thousands, the data shows that if your content is contagious enough, it will spread just as far. I think this also has to do with the hyper-connected, seven degrees nature of the Twitter network.”

In the end, as publishers, it is our responsibility to ensure that our Tweets not only speak for themselves, but also represent our purpose, mission, and values.  While this data suggests that the mechanics for posting viral tweets is a matter of formula, I believe that affinity, respect, and stature also play prominent roles in the art and science of retweeting. Concurrently it is also our obligation to also retweet as a form of giving back to the community, recognizing those who actively contribute to a more meaning Twitterverse.

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Recently, I discussed the validity of whether or not social networking (the verb) and social networks (as a noun) were impairing our ability to learn. A Stanford study suggested that this might be the case.

It seems that the initial research and its supporting data is now emerging to help us further analyze whether or not this is indeed true or merely hypotheses based on the various samplings of individuals who may or may not serve as relevant subjects.

I do believe that we are becoming an increasingly social society. It could very well be the era of introversion to extroversion. With this evolution and transformation, we’re concurrently subject to a greater set of distractions. And as such, we are sidetracked by choice and free will. But, as this is the dawn of the great attention economy, and new tools such as PeopleBrowsr, Seesmic, CoTweet, Facebook, and TweetDeck become our attention dashboards, those of us active in the real-time Web must experience an evaporation of attention span and our ability to digest and respond to everything that moves us.

I call this the Attention Rubicon, the acceptance that our appetite for information has passed the point of no return. And, therefore we must concentrate energies on innovation and inventiveness, technologically and psychologically, to effectively process and parse data and in turn shift its momentum behind our online persona to earn equity online and offline. Embracing this Attention Rubicon and investing in our ability to learn, share, and contribute is how we will thrive in today’s attention economy.

If Social Media is a milestone in the evolution of literacy, is the evaporation of attention a form of regression? Or is it possible that that not everything faces a dichotomy?

The cultures and behavior that define each social network and ensuing activity is not only unique across the social Web, its affects and impacts our interaction within each as well as our interaction IRL (in real life).

Linda Stone offers a solution to this dilemma and she refers to it as Continuous Partial Attention.

Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch — we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive.

To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network.

According to new research conducted by psychologist Dr. Tracy Alloway at the University of Stirling in Scotland, we’re not only facing an increasingly thinning state of focus and awareness, we’re either enhancing intelligence or actually diminishing it based on the networks in which we participate. And her findings just might surprise you…

Dr. Alloway is an expert in working memory, the ability both to remember information and to use it.and she believes that it is far more important to success and happiness than our IQ.  Working memory involves the ability both to remember information and to use it. While her research included games as well as social networks, her discovery ultimately positions Facebook and Twitter on opposite axis.

Playing strategy games and solving Sudoku offers the same effect as engaging in Facebook according to Dr. Alloway and thus strengthens working memory. Whereas instant, rapid-fire services such as Twitter weaken it. In an interview with the Telegraph, Dr. Alloway warned, “Your attention span is being reduced and you’re not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.”

In Facebook users manage past activity and in turn map next steps and future actions, which exercises working memory. On the contrary, Twitter and YouTube and other real-time activity streams and networks impede  working memory and therefore hinder our ability to retain relevant insight and knowledge

Dr. Alloway also observed, ”On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it’s also very succinct. You don’t have to process that information.”

Whether its intentional or merely a by product of innovation, Twitter and Facebook are indeed on a collision course as each vie for not only your attention, but also to host your Social OS, relevant applications, and your social graph. Our attention is many incredible and wonderful things that allow us to observe, learn, appreciate, and respond. What it is not however, is endlessly scalable.

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It’s been an incredible week for stats, demographics, and authority trends related to Social Media this week.

The Social Web is our Industrial Revolution and our Renaissance period. It is at the very least completely transforming how we communicate with each other and how we also discover and share content.

Twitter, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed and other micro communities that define the Statusphere, are captivating and distracting our focus. But, while many argue that it’s decreasing productivity, I say it’s arousing a more active, engaging, and enlightened community of media literate information socialites.

While Twitter is stealing the spotlight with somewhere between 4-6 million passionate users and Facebook is taking over the networked world with 175 million nodes on the social graph, one thing is crystal clear, the statusphere is strengthened by the updates that inspire action, not those that reinforce the ME in Social Media – a.k.a. the narcisystem (coined by Chris Pirillo).

It’s in the way that you use it.

It’s the art of curation. Producing and posting updates that people find invigorating, insightful, entertaining, and enriching is how you build a meaningful foundation for which people to follow, admire, and trust you. You are a beacon for all that moves you.

Remember, the secret to attracting comments, likes or stimulating retweets is not governed by a formula, but instead by the intent and nature of sharing something worthy of response.

Jay Rosen calls this mindcasting. I would also add that this is key to community building.

It’s micro curation with macro education and collaboration served in Twitter time. It serves as a strong catalyst for valuable relationships in our personal and professional lives.

We’re living history as we not only document the transformation of media, but how information finds us.

We’re engaged at the point and place of introduction and bound by context and time. Striking content sparks curiosity and dictates our next move and subsequently the next moves and reactions of friends and friends of friends (FoFs). Some of us are smarter and humbled because of what we learn.

Hitwise released some very interesting information that reveals the emerging trends, activity, and true impact of injecting useful, interesting, and thought provoking updates into the micro social timeline.

The following numbers and charts surface the activity of where people go from Twitter.com. Note, that Twitter is one of the most dominant forces in referring traffic to blog posts, social profiles, news articles, and pictures and video on the Web.

The numbers indicate that Twitter is much more than a timeline for sharing and responding to useless or self-promotional content. Based on my own research using Bit.ly and Poprl, my numbers also corroborate the notion that Twitter can be a highly valuable source of personal and professional growth and a petri dish for growing invaluable relationships dictated solely by whom you follow.

Notice how Twitter users flock to interesting content wherever it’s hosted.

If you buy into the curation methodology, Twitter and other Statusphere networks represent the CPR and a new opportunity for the media industry disparately needs to engage a more discerning and constantly shifting audience.

As Steve Rubel so correctly observes, Twitter Search is poised to replace Google Blogsearch. His observation, HitWise numbers and an astute command of the obvious only reinforce the reality that The Blogosphere is Losing Authority to the Statusphere. Also Danny Sullivan documents how we search with the Twitter Search Engine.

Blogs will retain prominent influence as an online library of intellectual capital and social networks will also host compelling and relevant media assets and personalities. The Statusphere will serve as the bridge that connects people to content and the people behind the content, building relationships rooted context, interests, and passion.

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Source

Depending on which numbers you source or believe, all reports agree that the blogosphere continues to expand globally.

As the leading blog directory and search engine, Technorati maintains a coveted Authority Index which is considered amongst bloggers as the benchmark for measuring their rank and selling their position within the blogosphere. Authority is defined as the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the greater the level of Authority a blog earns.

However, a disruptive trend is already at play. While blogs are increasing in quantity, their authority—as currently measured by Technorati—is collectively losing influence.

In its annual State of the Blogosphere last year, Technorati revealed that it had indexed 133 million blog records since 2002. In March 2008, Universal McCann published a report that indicated 184 million blogs worldwide were created, with 346 million people reading blogs globally.

Indeed, consumers, businesses, content publishers, and media channels are embracing blogs as a way of engaging existing and reaching new readers to build an ecosystem around relevant conversations. It’s the convergence of dialog and journalism, creating a new generation of interconnectedness between publisher and community.

Blogging is entrenched in the mainstream.

So why do I believe that blog authority is losing its authority?

It goes back to the definition of authority. Links from blogs are no longer the only measurable game in town. Potentially valuable linkbacks are increasingly shared in micro communities and social networks and its affecting detouring attention and time away from formal blog responses.

As the social Web and new services continue the migration and permeation into everything we do online, attention is not scalable. Many refer to this dilemma as attention scarcity or continuous partial attention (CPA) – an increasingly thinning state of focus. It’s affecting how and what we consume, when, and more importantly, how we react, participate and share. That “something” is forever vying for our attention and relentlessly pushing us to do more with less driven by the omnipresent fear of potentially missing what’s next.

We are learning to publish and react to content in “Twitter time” and I’d argue that many of us are spending less time blogging, commenting directly on blogs, or writing blogs in response to blog sources because of our active participation in micro communities.

With the popularity and pervasiveness of microblogging (a.k.a. micromedia) and activity streams and timelines, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and the like are competing for your attention and building a community around the statusphere – the state of publishing, reading, responding to, and sharing micro-sized updates.

This new genre of rapid-fire interaction is further distributing the proverbial conversation and is evolving online interaction beyond the host site through syndication to other relevant networks and communities.

In most cases attention for commenters at the source post are competing against the commenters within other communities. Those who might typically respond with a formal blog post may now chose to respond with a tweet or a status update.

Attention is engaged at the point of introduction, and for many of us, we’re presented with worthwhile content outside of our RSS readers or favorite bookmarks. Relevant and noteworthy updates are now curated by our peers and trusted or respected contacts in disparate communities that change based on our daily click paths.

Retweets (RT) and favorites in Twitter, Likes and comments in FriendFeed and Facebook, posting shortened links that connect friends and followers back to the source post, have changed our behavior and empowered our role in defining the evolution of the connectivity and dissemination of information.

Now, we have the ability to instantly interact with, respond, or promote blog content away from the source blog, but that shouldn’t make the original post any less valuable. In fact, while blog authority isn’t capitalizing on these new sources for linkbacks, link authority is still affected, no matter the source, and helps increase the visibility and weight of the host blog in search engines.

The immediacy of publishing, sparking dialog, and receiving responses only reinforces this behavior. And, it encourages participation without having to write a blog post tracking back to the originator of each discussion. So, posts are missing out on a trove of valuable linklove that would otherwise contribute to their authority

Think about it.

There are supposedly 133 million blogs created, with far less in real use today. There are reportedly 175 million users on Facebook and another four million (and growing) on Twitter. The online social populace is necessitating the need for a new generation of establishing and measuring authority in the blogosphere before current blog metrics inaccurately paint a grim picture that they’re influence is declining – again as measured today.

One blog post can spark a distributed response in the respective communities where someone chooses to RT, favorite, like, comment, or share. These byte-sized actions reverberate throughout the social graph, resulting in a formidable network effect of measurable movement and activity. It is this form of digital curation of relevant information that binds us contextually and sets the stage to introduce not only new content to new people, but also facilitates the forging of new friendships with the publisher in the process.

With the right tools, everything is measurable.

BackType tracks tweets associated with a source URL regardless of the shortener used to link back to it. twInfluence measures Twitter influencers, not just by followers, but also by reach, velocity, social capital and centralization. Retweetist tracks the most “retweeted” people, URLs, and also those who actively “RT” others. Tweetbacks, Disqus, and Chatcatcher are tracking related tweets and directly connecting and listing them as traditional trackbacks at originating blog posts.

FriendFeed already released APIs and with Facebook opening up the News Feed to developers, apps will emerge that can track blog posts by volume of likes and shared links.

At SXSW, Klout will debut a new service that helps bloggers and content publishers measure Link Authority and a conversation index by tracking the frequency of shared URLs tied to the weighted stature of those sharing them compared to other links shared during the same time frame. The service will eventually provide a foundation to compare source URLs ranked within the service over time.

The ideas are abundant.

Shortly before publishing this post, I contacted Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, and we discussed the future of blog authority in the era of micromedia. His response was positive and immediately revealed that the team is actively entrenched in the creation of a modified platform that embraces widespread, distributed linkbacks to blog posts in order to factor them into the overall authority for affected blogs. He also, on the spot, set up a briefing to review where they’re at in terms of development as well as new options to factor into the equation.

Widespread blog responses are dwindling in favor of micro responses.

Authority within the blogosphere demands a new foundation to measure rank and relevancy that is reflective of the real world behavior and interaction of those who are compelled to link back to the post and extend its visibility in new, engaging, and prominent communities.

Blog authority as measured by Technorati is declining. However, blog authority as measured by links is booming. It’s now more authoritative than ever before as bloggers can reach and resonate with new readers outside of their traditional ecosystem to cultivate a dispersed community bound by context, centralized links, and syndicated participation. Microblogging will only grow in importance and prevalence. It’s just a matter of embracing the inevitable and measuring the linklove in and out of the blogosphere.

Looking into the crystal ball, this discussion also begets the question, will we need a seperate Technorati channel for measuring authority for content publishers on Twitter, in addition to blog authority?

Feel free to share your ideas…

Update 1: At 11:00 a.m. PDT, BackTweets had tracked over 350 Twitter links to the original TechCrunch post, none of which are contributing to the overall authority index.

Update 2: Technorati published a blog post and a Tweet that explains new data-set modifications to blog links and authority, not including Twitter and other forms of micromedia linkbacks.

Update 3: I am meeting with Technorati within the next two weeks.

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Like is the new favorite, which was at the time, was the new bookmark. This small, but important feature will no less, reinforce relationships between friends and followers and those who produce, interact with, and share content.

Made popular by services such as FriendFeed, and now Facebook, the idea of liking an update is much bigger than merely bookmarking or favoriting (yes, it’s a new verb in the social web) updates from friends and contacts for later reference. The act of liking is quickly emerging as a simple, but complimentary gesture of acknowledgment and reciprocation to recognize the contribution of someone whom you follow.

FriendFeed

As Robert Scoble notes, FriendFeed is Facebook’s R&D; department. Recently, Facebook introduced the act of liking updates directly into the personal, and precious, News Feed a.k.a. the Statusphere.

New services and communities are also debuting based on the premise of liking. Likaholix, for example, builds a community around reciprocity and those who actively like relevant material.

Likaholix fuses bookmarking and the kindness of liking with influence. It creates a layer of “tastemakers” around those topics and fields in which users emerge as experts based on their consistent, themed contributions and activity within the network.

Liking is the epitome of the relationship-based culture powering the authenticity, ethics, and reciprocal interactions on the Social Web. It’s a powerful form of micro recognition, which serves as an approving, motivating, and uplifting nod from someone else.

Likes also offer a macro impact within social networks. The deed of liking an update resonates within and outside the social graph as those who follow your activity will now receive an introduction to something that caught your attention, thus amplifying the source post or update to span across the relevant net as well as the network of friends of friends (FoFs).

As the social Web and new services continue the migration and permeation into everything we do online, we’re endlessly faced with an increasingly thinning state of continuous partial attention (CPA). It’s affecting how and what we consume, when, and more importantly, how we react, participate and share. That “something” is forever vying for our attention and relentlessly pushing us to do more with less driven by the omnipresent fear of missing out on what’s next. However, the act of liking is a symbol for how we can still publicly appreciate updates and those behind them without carving out precious time to formally comment or bookmark them in external networks.

Source: Andreina

Likes are incredibly powerful as they facilitate the sharing of love in byte-sized actions that reverberate throughout social networks, resulting in a formidable network effect of movement or diversion. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually. Liking sets the stage to introduce not only new content to new people, but also facilitates the forging of new friendships in the process.

How does this change how you discover and share updates and content?

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Bernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu of the Social Computing Laboratory at HP Labs conducted an in-depth study of the relationships that power Twitter. The team recently released its report, “Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope.”

The abstract:

Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rhythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.

The paper captures the definition of online relationships in the Social Web and why they are inherently ambient and not intimate as opposed to those we maintain in the real world. In life, we embrace those relationships that are mutually beneficial and not necessarily one-sided.

In social networks, however, many factors are present that impact the social graph as well as the ebb and flow of information and ultimately dictate what becomes a top trending topic, who garners relative authority, and also what goes viral.

According to the report, “A link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them. As we showed in the case of Twitter, most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view. Thus the need to find the hidden social network; the one that matters when trying to rely on word of mouth to spread an idea,
a belief, or a trend.”

The intentions of Social Networks and Micro Communities (such as Twitter) were genuine and innovative as they attempted to improve communication, sharing, and connectivity between friends, family, associates. The new social economy also aspired the building of bridges between the previously disconnected and interspersed relationships that join friends of a friend (FOAF).

What has evolved however, is so much more than the connection of friends and friends of friends. Social Networks have created a parallel friend/follower archetype that injects a homologous top-down network where individuals not only connect with those they know, but also with those who are interested in following their online activity, and not necessarily with the expectation of reciprocation. This injects a new dynamic into online social relationships, one that facilitates and fosters a less personal, but still meaningful engagement, creating an ambient, persona-audience interconnection.

In an attempt to measure influence while revealing relationships on Twitter, Benedikt Koehler developed Twitter Friends. Koehler’s application is by far the most compelling and valuable analysis tool for measuring the @-crowd or “the relevant net,” those people that any given user converses with most often.

He observes, “The number of people you follow on Twitter is not the whole truth. It’s more interesting [to see] who you are talking to whether you are following them or not. It [is] not a connection-based network but a performance-based network.”

Revealing the Hidden Network – The Outbound Relevant Net

Using TwitterFriends to visualize the outbound relevant net for someone, in this case me, on Twitter, here’s a snapshot of those I most recently conversed with in the public timeline:

This is what’s called the “Hidden Network,” but it’s not representative of the whole story. This map merely represents a moment in time where context and related events connected individuals and therefore formed a transient first-level map of contextual relations or conversations.

The Inbound Relevant Net – Public Conversations @username

The followers and followers of followers that consistently, and loyally, RT, @, promote, or cite (tweet) excerpts of content related to a particular username is a far more compelling revelation into the true influence and authority of a relevant network – one that is powered by both parallel and divergent factors associated with outbound conversations sourced from the host ID.

Using TwitterFriends to visualize the inbound network as it relates to @briansolis, let’s compare the corresponding map to that of the Relevant Net above:

Both reveal valuable information as they transform hidden networks into visual maps of contextual relations and associated influence for deeper analysis. But to assume online social influence or connectivity is limited to only the above networks, incoming or outgoing, is insular.

Contextual Networks

I suggest we inject another dynamic into the equation, one that in my opinion, weighs more than the conversation quotient that measures the hidden network of those you (or any username) message in public – whether inbound or outbound. Whether or not these conversations are intended to elicit a response directly from a source or @username, the orbiting dialog around a particular person and the topic of conversation is paramount. We’re seeing this increasing level of shared behavior in the practice of RT (retweeting) on Twitter or “liking” on Facebook or Friendfeed. The public sharing of relevant content introduced by any given individual sparks conversations across social graphs with or without the formal participation of the original contributor. This exchange changes based on the content that’s introduced to the public.

This is what I call the Influence Factor (IF). It is a related network that connects second, third-level and sequential friends and friends of friends (FOFs) that are bound by topic and time.

The Backchannel

Perhaps the most accurate Relevant Net that truly documents actual relationships is The Backchannel – those individuals whom someone directly engages behind the scenes.

This additional, but no less relevant, hidden phenomena is the explicit exchange of content, a private request, or an implicit action that catalyzes the sharing of information, content, or ideas across multiple, distinct social graphs to directly influence and catalyze the friends of those trusted social beacons as well as the progression levels of the friends of friends effect.

The Social Economy

In day-to-day online conversations, content exchange and reciprocity are the currencies that finance the Social Economy. This entire discussion is true and constant whether focused on Twitter or traditional social networks such as Facebook or MySpace.

A social network is not necessarily bound by relationships as much as it is driven by the exchange of shared ideas and information through a one-to-one and one-to-many conversation that is inclusive of top-down, bottom-up, inside-out, and outside-in peer-to-peer interaction.

Many of us forge relationships and engage in online conversations unlike those we maintain in the real world.

The Ties that Bind

Source

We’re bound by context and it is under these circumstances, the relevant network actively transforms in each of the scenarios above.

The ties that bind us together in online networks aren’t intrinsically dictated by people, but instead by constant as well as shifting contextual themes that unite us. It forms the foundation for a different dynamic for engagement and a new definition of relationships.

The individual social graph is then networked by the common interests of people as they relate to specific dialogue over time and also in the moment, and thus, it’s always expanding and contracting. We identify uniquely with different individuals across varying topics. A true social graph and the relationships that define it are constantly influx and measurable only as snapshots tied to subjects frozen in time.

It is for this reason, that we should also create and analyze contextual maps based on the themes that bring us together.

Therefore keywords, not necessarily those conversations we host or “@” in aggregate, are the primary research criterion when analyzing the connection and interaction between individuals and groups to more accurately identify and chart a “contextual map” that visualizes the distinct relationships united by commonality, affinity, and/or loyalty.

Viral marketing, videos, content, “insert keyword here,” as governed by an identifiable and formulaic process and Relevant Net, technically become myths. It’s people and their shifting network of relationships combined with the extended reach of their contextually-based friends’ networks that can make something viral or make someone influential within specific social realms.

Everything starts with listening and observation – a bit of digital anthropology if you will – in order to assess and understand diverse cultures, relationships, behavior, and dynamic influence, as well as the migration and impact of content, across the relevant net.

A connection-based network now also becomes a performance-based network. But metrics, maps, and hidden networks aside, the culture of social networks is cultivating a new breed of influence and connections that tie us to more than those we know in the real world, but also those whom we connect with because of what we represent through our online personae.

How does this change how you view and manage important relationships if at all?

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