Social media is a humbling experience much of the time. For one it is a super fast barometer of many aspects of our digital persona made up partly of a) our online influence, b) what people ‘feel’ about you (sentiment) and c) who we are connected too but more recently with the introduction of Twitter Lists we now have an element of ‘labelling’ aka ‘tagging’. Like most I am not keen on being pigeon holed, filed and rubber stamped as ‘this kind’ of person or someone who only ‘thinks/creates/is involved’ in those things, but I was fascinated this morning in doing what Laurel Papworth did some months ago, looking at how others saw me based only on my Twitter activity.
I have currently been added to 700 lists (which I think is up in the top 10% or so?) –
the key of course is that these lists are created un-prompted by those they follow, they have selected ‘you’ quietly in the background to be a part of a personal filter, carefully structured by users who want a way to distill the vastness of a 140 character universe of noise, that is twitter – making lists for themselves of a few key personal influencers through to hundreds of sharing tweeters across several lists on quite broad topics, the lists themselves followed by thousands.
There were over 6.5 million twitter lists at the start of 2010 so I suspect at least double that for 2011 according to TNW and there are hundreds of tList directories on the web now such as ListAtlas that focuses on the most popular lists such as 22 000 following the @bieberarmy :: justinfollowplease list of 91 fans who “want to be followed” by JB himself or 38 verified world leaders compiled into this list @verified :: World Leaders followed by 15 000 or so. But back to my own little world…I am not sure if the lists below represent ‘who I am’, especially as 75% of my twitter activity is sharing links, but they certainly represent areas I work in and am interested by.
… without further ado – I quickly used TextWrangler to pull out key words and broke the 700 lists (I am on) into smaller ‘categorised’ batches. This serves as a one stop shop for me to dip in and out and decide which lists I will follow and for you to possibly find ones you may find of interest.
I was invited to keynote at the IADIS multi conference in the really tough summer environment that is Carvoeiro (a quaint Portugese coastal town & limestone cliff’d seascape on the Algarve). The conference (at the Tivoli Hotel image below) has many strands overlapping probably due to over 1300 submitted papers looking at a massive range of topics. I have linked to each of the main strands below that were excellently edited by Prof. Katherine Blashki, Prof. Pedro Isaías & others. Most of the papers are typically academic (meaning theoretical or retrospective), but a few gems some were ‘zeitgeist practical/industrial’ and some needed a good deal of focus, kick-up the proverbial.
I was lead keynoting for a few strands, namely Telecommunications, Networks and Systems 2009, Informatics 2009 and the main conference Game and Entertainment Technologies 2009. It was a tall order to bridge these areas so I tried to encapsulate a few of my own current practical strands as well as ‘thinks’ at how play is truly everywhere, already escaped the bounds of the screen but the real focus was about the many new forms being created organically inside social media networks. (This slideshare is annotated – albeit in a slightly jetlagged haze and so only scrape the surface of the key messages!). The talk was well received and nice to see terms like ‘transocialmedia’ being used in discussion in later sessions. Also interesting to see a Strategy Analytics report using the term ‘Social Virtual Worlds’ I coined a couple of years ago in a report linked here and in my presentation below.
Clip above from the earlier Australian version of The Phone in Feb 09 & interview with its producer Chris Berry here
Interesting timing to receive a prod from the publicist of this show as I am in the middle of mentoring groups of AFTRS directing students who are developing ARG/Social Media drama. The tendency is to always over author the story environments and they turn into endless quests through fixed content but in this new hybrid form The Phone, described below, starts to mash-up urban locative quests with high production value TV crime/spy drama – a true development of form & innovation?
I don’t know what is in the blogosphere water at the moment but every day for the last 6 months or so we seem to get a new list or top 10/20/25/50. They seem to fall into 1 of 4 categories.
The best of’s – Ordered lists based on some open or secret formula of the good, bad an ugly personalities or online sites.
Great tools/software – Really simple pointers to applications that are going to make your online life easier.
Tips/tricks – A plethora in this category as we all want to list our prioritized strategies for engagement, ROI, KPI, SYF and other acronyms.
Case Studies – we all want to know what is working and who is making Social Media, PR, Marketing etc: work.
I have nothing against lists per se as to many new entrants they are very useful ‘bookmark’ fodder or research or creating ‘Link Juice’ ® and getting ‘linked’ to the top influencers/sites etc: but the reasons they are created follow a rather predictable pattern. First the top ‘anythings’ attract us generally – knowing the best examples in any field will help us ‘enter’ that field. Secondly in a linked online world, all those links out draw the same people to your list to check out ‘where they are’ – they will then often re-blog your list and add endless comments of thanks, what about so and so plus quite a few moaners about ‘how unfair the system is!”.
BTW the picture top right is me just playing with my new Canon 5D MkII (*distant shouts of show off*)
But generally it is, like the Oscars, a virtuous circle – award winning, creates more award potential. For any new Social Media entrant, throw a top 20 list together over breakfast and watch the technorati links come in – even if you don’t really have a clue about anythong on the list your creating! Thirdly being seen creating a list suggests, contrary to point 2, that you know so much about your area you can actually filter, rate and rank ‘all’ the masses of activity in that space. Many lists use a mashup of traditional SEO type ratings (links in/out, longevity etc) but we still need to get to a point where subscribers and more importantly true engagement (how many comments and how much time the ‘auteur’ spends in conversation with his/her readers – Laurel Papworth has just done a comprehensive post No Comments? No Engagement, on this).
DRUM ROLL
So without further ado here is a list of my top (plucks figure out of the air) 25 lists/top ofs/best of’s lists (Social Media, Marketing, Media and some Australian ones thrown in). I have used a special algorithm (roughly if the list has lots of pretty colours and has me in it!) a rating from 0 to 100 and then the associated position. Seriously, it is ranked by me on the science behind the list, how extensive and global and if it looks ‘real’ vs political (sure you know what I mean here). Plus elements of timeliness, if the lists are dynamic or a manual operation every month or so.
But I hope you find it useful, the list ranking is the number at the end of the first line – *sits back and watches the links & comments come in 🙂 Or have we reached saturation point already!*
Not really 150 but now approaching 1000 blogs/sites, a dynamic list (I like those) based on many of the key web measurements systems (technoratic, google, alexa etc) “The Power 150 is a ranking of the top English-language media and marketing blogs in the world, as developed by marketing executive and blogger, Todd Andrlik.” Also check out MediaHunters blog, he has filtered out Australians on the list (snapshot only).
A fabulously researched list of the best articles (cause that’s what thought provoking longer form posts are) on Social Media & Marketing “In the Internet Marketing Best Posts “series,” I take posts that are typically timeless – they’re not confined to a specific event or news occurrence – they’re valuable for the long haul in terms of Internet Marketing and creative strategy. Hopefully, you’ll see that these posts are still relevant in a few years down the road.”
There are hundreds of iPhone lists popping up – that look a lot like this one. But this top 50 involved the iPhone modding community in a big way so thumbs up from me! “The list is the top 50 applications for the jailbroken iPhone and iPod Touch. If you’re looking for a top list of ‘official iPhone apps’ then refer to the 2 links at the top of this post. I have taken the data from the iPhone Apps you all have rated. . .tweaked the list a little(adding some apps not listed here). . .and here is the massive list.”
Tracking over 300 blogs – IM Top Blogs uses a variety of important metrics when ranking sites on the list: Feedburner, Alexa, Complete Rank, Technorati, Google PageRank, Yahoo, Stumble, delicious, Winning Web links and user votes. These 10 quality factors are weighted according to their importance and then combined in a way to give each blog a relative score in points (out of 1,000). This comprehensive points system is used to accurately rank each blog on the list.
Based on a secret TwitterRank algorithm and is a bit of a mashup between AdAge Power150 and Twitterank “the January 2009 list for the top 150 twitter users with advertising and marketing blogs”
Although an ‘all areas’ list, I like this one because Meg actually tells you the formula (albeit very few ingredients) – useful if you want to try and game…I mean improve your rating! For now the secret recipe “The Index can be explained as follows. I have taken three variables – AU = Alexa Rank in Australia, X = Global Alexa Rank, T = Technorati Rank and applied a formula – which is (3 x AU + X + T) /5.”
Probably the only ‘top’ list that has an accompanying video! Michelle has some very practical 101 link building & SEOÂ tips on her site “These are the top ranking social media websites that you should focus your link building efforts on.”
There is a bit of a collection growing in this series and they are all pretty good. From Christina on the travel tools “Travel tools on the Web have continued to evolve, taking in all that Web 2.0 has to offer, and enhancing the ability to share information, work creatively and increase collaboration between users and companies”
OK not particularly ordered, just a very Top Rank editor’s BIGLIST of SM and marketing blogs, alphabetically. A good resource, but not really a “best of”? – “…a collection of over 400 blogs maintained by the staff at TopRank Online Marketing. This edited list includes blogs that cover a range of internet marketing topics ranging from SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) to blog marketing, marketing with social media and online public relations.”
A particularly large growth area. This directory site is a great starter resource for those looking at some of the key applications across the mobile social web. “This is a directory list of all known mobile social networks for cellphone and mobile devices. Well, known to me, Laurel Papworth anyway. I compiled a couple of hundred social network services for the cellphone and mobile devices in mid 2007 for a presentation at WebDirections on Mobile Social Networks. In 2006 ish I was posting on GPSLocationBasedService any gps mobile stuff on social networks I could find. In 2007 I used MyMobilePals. I’m now merging those two sites into this directory list of mobile social networks.”
One of the best early lists showing how widespread virtual worlds are becoming – and there are a lot in this category also. This list contains lots of useful subscriber information but also has online games. Of course I did my own post and popular Virtual World video list (of sorts) a few months ago here. From Dan “the below round-up of 50 virtual worlds, ranked by approximate user numbers. Gleaned from a wide range of different sources, they are mostly self-reported and cover a multitude of differing definitions. I’ve tried to reconcile the figures wherever possible to try and reflect number of active users rather than number of avatars or visitors to the website, although many will still be way off base.”
…below is a list of 50 niche social news sites and their power accounts. You could contact a few power accounts the next time you have a piece of news you want to get out. You could join a small community and become a power account yourself. Or you could just check the list out for a few new interesting sites to visit.
As a result, there are many, many companies, agencies and consultants rushing to offer social media services. Unfortunately, they don’t know what they’re doing
In the ever-evolving world of social media, public relations professionals (PR) and journalists have more opportunities than ever to build strong relationships.
Junta42 is a search community site focused on content marketing and custom publishing solutions. If it’s content about content, from blogs to articles to podcasts to videos, you’ll find it here.
Only based on Alexa but a nice long list and nicely coded with column sorting. This is a good exercise in php/Alexa and all about deciding what should be included “This is the comprehensive list of best Social Media and Social Bookmarking sites. I have sorted it by Alexa ranking which roughly represents the popularity of website.”
Bit of a URL dump but based on one of those ‘secret algorithms’. “We just implemented our “influence ranking algorithm”. So we ran it against the ~1000 ’social media marketing’ blogs we monitor on an ongoing basis (along with tweets, forums, Q&As…) – The influence algorithm used for the ranking is purely link based. Its uniqueness is that we are only counting the links within the dataset of blogs that are part of the community, both blogroll and direct links.”
Another list only, but given Twitter’s growth and engagement a very important one from a national standpoint. It contains over 40 examples with links to their Twitter accounts. Be interested in other country’s version of this from Laurel ” Want a list of Australian CEOs that are on Twitter? Scroll to the bottom. Business Week have a piece on each CEO that uses the so-called ‘microblogging’ service Twitter. I don’t like the term micro-blogging when applied to Twitter as it’s less of a one-to-many asynch depth of content site like a video blog or a multimedia blog and more of a few-to-few synchronous chat channel.”
“In this guide we cover the 25 best web2.0 applications for entrepreneurs who are looking for simple, cheap, and effective solutions to solving some of the tasks facing their small business or startup. The 25 applications selected were chosen both on the basis of their usefulness for the individual small business manager as well as their effectiveness in providing community support and networking opportunities for users”
Really an Australian subset of AdAges Power150 with a Julian ‘marketing innovation’ ranking element – “The ranking system is very similar to the AdAge Power 150 methodology…I have also added a Pioneer score (10), this is a subjective score which is scored in terms of the blogs ability to have pioneering thoughts about Marketing. I believe it is our role as Marketing bloggers to discover and inform the rest of the industry about the changing Marketing landscape.”
There have been a number of lists posted around the blogosphere about the Top 50 Australian bloggers or Top 100 australian marketing blogs etc. As we couldn’t find an equivalent list for twitter – we put together a list of Australia’s most influential Twitterers. This is a draft version for now and im sure we will release a more accurate version soon.
Trying to keep on top of the ever-changing world of social media? Whether you are a marketer, developer, technologist, industry insider, or simply a news lover, this is the list for you
Based on Alexa and Twitter nominations only “I asked my twitter friends to nominate people who they thought were some of the most powerful and influential women in Social Media. It was no surprise that they quickly and enthusiastically responded with the list of ladies below”
OK getting spooky now, lists within lists within lists…A great way to get ideas for how your organization can use social media is to check out what others are doing. Here are 18 sites below (and one book) that will get you started.
“If you’re into PR and social media and you’re new to podcasting or are looking for a few new shows to check out, here are my current favourites, in no particular order”
Did I say 25?! Ah well. If you’re a WordPress blogger and you’re looking to use social media to reach more readers, there are plenty plugins to enhance your blog’s optimization for social media. Here are 10 of the best.
So there you go. You made it this far and still conscious. If you have any other great top 10s/20s etc: or other favourite lists please chuck-em into comments for all to see and who knows there may even be an update of this already definitive (hehe) list….
