Time for Underhood EGO?
It started as a joke while we were having beers at our office.
“We give social reputation scores to companies and brands. But what about personal brands? Should’t we rate people too?”
When the idea of measuring humans was brought up, our first reaction was: this is too Black Mirror. Over the limit. Evil. But on the other hand: powerfully naughty. We could not get rid of the subject.
Over the limit. Evil. But on the other hand: powerfully naughty.
“The tagline could be, ‘Measure your worth in the world’”.
We all lolled. In a hollow tone.
Then — as always happens when on flow — the name came to us.
“Ego,” said somebody. “No, EGO, in capitals. Underhood EGO.”
Brand was developing fast. And we could not stop.
We actually tried to forget the idea. None of us talked about EGO for weeks. We really struggled to stay serious and B2B-minded. But every time we mentioned the idea to our friends, they lit up. People were much more thrilled about EGO than about our current business, where we measure brands.
Our friends lit up.
“This is so year 2017, totally nailing the narcissistic times we are living through. You are gonna get so rich.”
“That should be done as an art performance. A social experiment.”
Now we are slowly seeing the possibilities of giving social scores not only to brands but also to people, based on their personal performance on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, blogs, and other online services.
This new approach would need some technical work, because at the moment we analyse publicly available social media and other online data. On current Underhood anyone can add any company, brand, or politician to our daily analysis. No access to insights or other private info is needed.
Wouldn’t you like to know how loved you really are?
But once again: Wouldn’t you like to know how loved you really are on social media? Your online value? If there were a clear and undeniable score that told you how excited your audience is about you — exactly like we do already for brands, would you log in to see where you stand?
Of course we are not the first to think about rating people based on their social media popularity. The best-known case has been Klout, whose scoring algorithm was kept secret until November 2015, when they released a a scientific paper describing the logic behind their social influence score.
Klout, launched nine years ago, became a big and controversial hit in 2011–13 and was sold to Lithium Technologies in the spring of 2014 for USD 200 million.
Klout was giving “Klout scores” to its millions of users. Social influence scores of between zero and 100 were calculated from multiple social services, and the most popular and influential people — those with the highest Klout scores — were given “perks”, which were free products from Klout’s partners. The idea, of course, was to bribe the most popular part of the population to add stardust to products and make them desirable to normal folk. Perks program ended in the end of 2015.
Klout’s business model made many people angry. Especially among those who did not get as good a score as they thought they deserved.
“Klout exists to turn the entire Internet into a high school cafeteria, in which everyone is defined by the table at which they sit. And there you are, standing in the middle of the room with your lunch tray, looking for a seat, hoping to ingratiate yourself with the cool kids, trying desperately not to get funneled to the table in the corner where the kids with scoliosis braces and D&D manuals sit.”
So wrote John Scalzi in his column on CNN Money in 2011, when the service was gaining popularity and the latest news was that Klout scores had been used in recruiting. Scalzi called Klout evil and “run by dicks”.
Klout was also causing rage because during its peak popularity days it did not reveal the logic behind how the scores were calculated. This whole “black box” ideology gave it an aura of mystery but also made Klout’s use impossible in academic studies and in businesses that require transparency behind their decisions.
But the real reason for the fury was in the basics.
Frankly all social scoring is wrong
“Beyond this fundamental sleaziness, there is a bigger issue that makes Klout wrong, and frankly all social scoring wrong”, wrote Ron Jay Miller on Social Media Today in November 2011, in his article called “Delete your Klout Profile Now!”
He went on: “Influence cannot be measured, just as beauty and cool cannot be measured. Measuring ‘social influence’ tries to sell the lie that such things as ‘social influence’ and ‘connected-ness’ can be measured quantitatively, then acquired, packaged and sold to the highest bidder.”
Well, there I have to disagree with Miller. Social influence can actually be measured quite well. On the social web, every like, share, comment, mention or follow you get adds to your influence capital. All those reactions are easy to import to data systems for deeper analysis.
It’s now more than five years since Klout was hot. About three billion people use social media services, and Facebook just announced they have gone over two billion monthly users. Personal branding has become essential in almost any profession, whether we like it or not.
Data analysis too has taken huge steps since 2011–12. It is now easy and affordable to send raw bits to services that return magical results and improve their accuracy at a quickening pace.
Could it be time to start scoring humans again?
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Underhood is a service that measures the reputation of companies, brands and organisations on the Internet automatically. At Underhood, everyone sees each other’s reputation ratings, and companies can develop their own communications on the basis of the reports. Underhood works closely with the academic community.
Check your own reputation: https://underhood.co
