Briefs

By Shiv Singh on December 12, 2008

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Well, now we've taken that a step further with a patent filed on how to measure social influence. This is one more proof point of how measurable and meaningful social influence marketing can be for marketers everywhere. Its not the whole solution but a key piece to understanding the measurement and why and how things go viral. Please tell me what you think about this. Is it a big deal, is it a no brainer, does it add value?

The Data Problem: Today social media apps (widgets, applications, viral media, etc.) cannot track or account for unique individuals other than those who download the application and those that download the application from a friend. Couple that with the lack of known quantitative methods for identifying key influencers within a social network in regards to a specific application and you’ve got a big problem for the industry. Certainly a billion dollar problem and one that matters a lot if we want to make social influence marketing more real for marketers.

Core Questions We Tried To Answer:

• What is the value of a key influencer?
• How viral or how many generations of influence has my social media application achieved?
• What is the value of someone who receives a social application from a friend versus someone who receives it via media or a paid seeding strategy?

The Razorfish Incrementing Action Tag Solution:

Our solution is the Incrementing Action Tag which is a set of functions within a social media application that creates a variable that may be read externally based on where the user acquires the application. When a user downloads the application from the original source, the Incrementing Action Tag notes the source and assigns the downloader the value of first generation (or one). When another downloader obtains the application from somewhere other than the original source (e.g. a friend, other website, etc.), the Incrementing Action Tag looks at the variable (or generation) assigned to the current source and increments it by one; thus making the next downloader generation two or other appropriate generation number.

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