An Open Letter To Fast Company
Dear Fast Company,
First, let me congratulate you on your monthly magazine. It is a magazine, I still look forward to getting every month (along with my bible, Entertainment Weekly). It is great to get a magazine that has reviews, comment and articles about people I actual know instead of, say, Spencer and Heidi.
I am writing you this letter because you, well, do not get it.
You put out this well-done resource with articles about new technology, design, leadership, blah, blah, blah. It was something that told me, “Fast Company is a resource that is creditable and a good source for things in the Social Media/Online area.” That was until yesterday, when I got invited to take part in your “Influence Project.” See, first I got this teaser email back in June:
Hi Dave, it’s Rebecca from Fast Company and I want to share with you a very new, soon-to-be launched project.
The project? It’s a fun experiment called The Influence Project that will visualize and track how active influence spreads, the reach of people’s social graph, plus it will map degrees of separation, etc. By participating in the program, you can more accurately measure your active influence on your networks. Everyone’s photo will land in the pages of Fast Company plus interesting stories from the program will also be covered by the magazine as well as online.
We’ll ping you Wednesday with more detailed info. And for being one of the first to jump in, we’d like to give you something back. We’ll email you the link to the site the eve prior to launch to check it out.
Looking forward to seeing you in The Influence Project and feel free to get in touch anytime.
Best,
RebeccaThe Influence Project :: Fast Company
I thought, “Cool, I am looking forward to this amazing metric, new technology and new way to measure influence. Wow, maybe they will give Klout a run for their money.”
Then I got this email:
Dave,
Thank you for participating in Fast Company’s The Influence Project.
You’re about to find out how influential you really are.Your unique, personalized ‘influencer’ URL is:
http://fcinf.com/v/ase7/welcome
Click on the above link, and start influencing!
Remember:
1) You can use any means to spread your unique link to your online network.
We shortened it for you so you can share on Twitter and Facebook.
2) Your goal is to influence as many people to click on it as possible.
3) You want those people to sign up as well, since they will be spreading
your influence along with their own.
4) You can track how your influence has grown, where it’s lead, and where
you stand at any time on the site.
5) Your picture is going to be in the November issue of Fast Company
magazine, where we’ll reveal the most influential person online!Thank you,
The Fast Company team
Ummmm…a link? You’re measuring influence by the number of people I get to click on a link? A lousy link? Are you kidding me? Is this a joke? I know — you’re punking me right? Where is Ashton Kutcher?
Oh, you’re serious… this is your great project? Well, I hate to break it to you. It’s flawed. No, really, it is. See look…
If I have a network of 100 people and I get 100 people to click the “link,” but there is another person that has a network of say 100,000 people and gets 1,000 to click it, they have more influence? I am far from being a math wiz, but I do not see how that person has more “influence.” They have a larger network, but a smaller success rate.
Also, you are looking at influence being based on clicking a link? Did I mention that? I promise you that somewhere right now, someone is setting up a contest that says “Wanna have a chance at winning $1,000? Just click this link.” Oh, and that link would be the influence project link. So they get to buy influence, kinda like Bernie Madoff.
Bottom line, you’re measuring influence on getting people to click a link. You are way off base.
Well, thanks for reading my letter. I appreciate it. Also, I was looking to renew my subscription and wondering if I can get the Fast Company clock radio this year instead of the blanket? Is that okay? I mean, I do not want to influence you into doing it…
Tweets that mention An Open Letter To Fast Company -- Topsy.com
1 year ago
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dave Peck, Mark Graham and Max Silver. Max Silver said: Couldn't have written it any better – looks like crappy SEM to me RT @davepeck: An Open Letter To Fast Company http://bit.ly/9OnT1H [...]
Lynette Radio
1 year ago
You would think by now EVERYONE realizes vomiting links on social sites is the kiss of death.
davepeck
1 year ago
Lynette, yep.. you would think…
bullfrogmedia
1 year ago
My biggest issue with the Influence Project is that it takes so long to load, and I often have to refresh just to get it to work properly — causing it to take forever to load again. Sure, I may get people to click on the link, but they're just going to get pissed off once they do and the link doesn't work.
certainlysocial
1 year ago
i have to add influence is not about quantity, but quality. pretty basic, but this contest does not take that into account. i didnt sign up…
jenmitch
1 year ago
The Influence Project should really be called the "Online Popularity Contest." Popularity doesn't equal influence.
Bob Safian
1 year ago
Dave,
Bob Safian here, the editor of Fast Company. Thanks for your nice words about our magazine. I'm sorry that you find the Influence Project disappointing. Our goal is to conduct a real-time editorial experiment, that gathers real data about how people interact on the web. We want to make it simple for folks to participate, which is why only a single click is required. But we are looking to see who activates a large proportion of their social network–even if that network is smaller—and we'll be covering who succeeds in that regard, both at fastcompany.com and in our November issue. Senior editor Mark Borden posted a blog recently explaining some of this further. http://www.fastcompany.com/1667964/popularity-ego….
If it turns out that someone sets up a "Wanna win $1,000?" link, and uses that to shoot to the top of our list, we'll report that out as well. We plan to drill down into this information, to help explain to our readers all the different ways people online try to exert influence—what's effective, what's appropriate, what's worth paying attention to or steering clear of, etc. This is a fact-finding study (and not the only one we'll be tapping into). Some folks may participate purely to stroke their own egos. Others, we hope, will do so to help further our research. We hope that altruism and authenticity will ultimately win the day. But we'll have to wait and see. It's up to the participants to define the character of The Influence Project.
Thanks again,
Bob
Jeff
1 year ago
All due respect Bob, but the only thing your response does is reinforce the notion that Fast Company doesn't fundamentally understand the space. Or even worse, that Michael Arrington was right when he penned "Fast Company Creatively Combines Link Baiting With A Pyramid Scheme – Yes, this is a contest to see who can send the most traffic to Fast Company." http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/fast-company-lin…
davepeck
1 year ago
Bob, thank you so much for your response. I think it is great you have taken the time to offer your take on this!
iquick
1 year ago
Dave – great letters and you're dead on.
Bob – yup, you still don't get it. This sort of strategy may appeal to people who don't use the internet all that much such as baby boomers, blue collar workers, or the person who occasionally browses the internet (yet read your magazine). And for them – this is a great idea. You're getting them more into social media by participating in your 'influence project.'
What you've severely overlooked is services that have been available for quite awhile that already perform your 'influence project' on a daily basis. Websites are ranked in popularity on quantcast.com, alexa.com and compete.com. Youtube has top video influencers right on its front page. Klout is an offspin of Twitter and shows you how influential you are there. Hell, Facebook streams have even moved to a 'TOP' and 'LIVE' feeds, showing who in our network may have posted a great video, picture, or link.
I think when Dave got the email, he was expecting a great service to use. In fact, I know he was. This is a poor attempt at moving forward in your business and playing in backyards that are already occupied. Rather than have people join yet another 'network' of people to share with their other 'networks' and you tally then announce it (simply for some PR) you should come up with something that people can't live without.
davepeck
1 year ago
Great feedback and thanks for the kind words
kgalliani
1 year ago
iQuick while I get your need to generalize and call our those who "do not get" the space remember some of the big influencers are indeed of the baby boomer age, I assume there are blue collar people who spend their time in social media and even have followers as well as twenty somethings who rarely engage withe the internet, social networks etc. at the end of the day it is about bring a nearly adopter, tech leader, and compelling visionary to gain influence. No need to put people in boxes. That being said I agree with Dave's take.. click links are dead.
ShellyKramer
1 year ago
Dear Dave,
Social Media and Trust |
1 year ago
[...] that is, in general for many internet users when it comes to using and buying over the internet. Dave Beck follow’s me on twitter and some of his tweets caught my eye when on Linded In I also saw a [...]
SEOKudos
1 year ago
An Open Letter To Fast Company…
Kudos for a great SEO article – Trackback from SEOKudos…
links for 2010-07-08
1 year ago
[...] An Open Letter To Fast Company RT @davepeck: Editor of @fastcompany responds to my negative blog post about the influencer project http://bit.ly/9OnT1H – Shelly Kramer (ShellyKramer) http://twitter.com/ShellyKramer/statuses/18002980313 (tags: via:packrati.us) [...]
Bob Safian
1 year ago
Dustin,
We're aware of quantcast and alexa, youtube and facebook. We're not trying to compete with them. What we are doing is conducting a short-term, 6-week journalistic experiment–a survey, if you will, to gather information about an important and fast-changing area. Our goal is to spark dialogue (like the discussion we're having here), to educate ourselves and help educate our readers–whether they are baby boomers, blue collar worker or valley digerati. I appreciate your participation in that. I appreciate Dave's responses as well. Some things, no doubt, we will have to agree to disagree about. We all have passion for this space, and see great potential in it.
Bob
Bob
Minter Dial
1 year ago
First, I think it is great that you, in person, came over to reply to Dave's Open Letter. Kudos. Secondly, experimentation is a necessary component to figuring out the "web 2.0" world and for helping organizations to evolve internally. I am sure this post is itself garnering attention internally… Whether or not we agree on the method, at least you are working on it…
In that this is indeed a fast changing area, as you write, the key will then be to find ways to use the data you discover in a relevant and speedy way…
Mainstream media is typically all about deadlines, but the integration of the social media into the media business is more about change management. And that is hard to do quickly.
albert maruggi
1 year ago
Crazy – They are measuring the influence of one when it's the crowd that matters.