Are You More Or Less Likely To Change Your Mind When The Majority Disagrees With You?

from the psychological-theories dept

There are a few different theories on how people react to finding out that they're in the minority on some particular viewpoint. One theory suggests that, when confronted with people disagreeing with our viewpoints, we just dig in stronger in order to validate our own self-worth. The other side of the argument, however, is that our need for social acceptance means that if we find ourselves in the minority, we may be more likely to change our opinion in order to remain socially connected to others. Apparently some researchers at HP decided to put some of this to the test to see which of the two theories held more sway. In this case, they asked people choose which piece of furniture they liked better out of two pieces. At some later time, they asked the same people the same question -- but also gave a count of how many people preferred each piece of furniture. What the researchers found was a bit unexpected: when a lot of people "disagreed" with the person's choice... they were more likely to stick to their original choice. When a smaller number of people disagreed, they were more likely to switch their vote. So, in the face over overwhelming opposition, it seems people are more ready to dig in. In the face of moderate opposition, they may be more open to changing their views. So, from now on, if everyone disagrees with me, I'm just going to have to dig in even stronger, because this report says that's the thing to do... (yes, that's a joke).

Filed Under: influence, studies

Activity Is Not Influence

from the tweet-this! dept

I recently wrote about my concerns with the rise of services that try to measure "social media influence" by giving it a number. I had a few concerns about this, including the fact that trying to put a number of something that is not quantifiable inevitably leads to problems, but also in that this would lead people to change how they use certain tools. I don't use Twitter for the sake of "influence," but as a communications vehicle. Yet, that harms my "scores" on these services and gives me incentive to do things that I'm not interested in doing.

It appears I'm not the only one concerned about this. Jeff Nolan points us to a writeup by Mack Collier, in which he express similar concerns, specifically noting that these services measure activity, which is different than influence -- and, in fact, can be antithetical to influence. He notes this because one of these services, Klout, told him his "score" was dropping, and the way to increase it was to tweet more things:

Essentially, Klout and Empire Avenue are measuring your level of social media activity, not your level of online influence.

Simply sharing more content and engaging with my network isn’t going to make me more influential over them. In fact if it’s not the type of content and engagement that they are looking for, my influence over them will fall, not rise as I become more active.

And yet, because these sites and their made up numbers declare that they're measuring "influence" lots of people just believe them. It's really unfortunate, and it's going to lead to people changing their behavior in ways that don't increase influence at all, but decrease it.

Filed Under: activity, influence, social media

Is Influence A Number... And Is It Based On Twitter?

from the hard-to-believe dept

There's been a lot of talk lately about figuring out who "influencers" are and a variety of services have sprung up to try to calculate just how influential a person is based on certain actions they do online -- usually specific to their Twitter of Facebook accounts. The three such services that seem to have received some attention of late are Klout, EmpireAvenue and PeerIndex, though there very well may be more. AdWeek recently wrote about how people's "Klout scores" are showing up on their resumes, and that people with high Klout scores are getting free stuff or getting preferential treatment from companies because of their influence.

I have to admit that the whole thing seems amusing to me, and in some sense, screams of a scam by users against companies. As long as you can convince them you're "influential" (whatever that means), you can get special treatment. Considering how frequently many companies have mistreated people, the idea that you can game a system (and most of these systems appear very gamable) and get special treatment has a bit of a poetic justice feel to it. But the whole thing also seems crazy, in the simple idea that just because you put a number on something, that it's then been "defined." There doesn't seem to be any clear way to make sure that any of these numbers actually mean anything, or actually have any real impact on "influence." Yet, because there's a number, it's considered important and accurate.

The other thing that makes me wonder about these sorts of things is that I don't use all of these different communications platforms the same way or for the same reasons. I use Facebook and Twitter was a method of communicating, not of influencing people. Yet if suddenly these random and arbitrary scores become important, do I start thinking differently about how I use these tools? Do I suddenly have incentives to get a lot more followers who will repeat what I say because it might increase my "influence" score? Personally, I don't care enough to do that, and it would probably ruin the benefits I get out of things like Facebook and Twitter, but it does make me wonder how attempts to define something that isn't really definable leads to a change in how those tools are used.

And, of course, the most damning point on all of these attempts to declare certain individuals as "influencers" is the research -- already a few years old -- that suggests the people who are declared as "influentials" may not really have that much influence. That is, people are most often influenced by people who they really know personally, rather than someone who is "famous" in some form or another. Now I do wonder if that's changing over time, and many people point out that Twitter and Facebook and the like often do make it feel like you get to "know" other people who you might not really know in real life, but it seems like in this rush to "grade" who is influential and who is not, we may have missed out on the fact that influence doesn't work like that...

Filed Under: influence, numbers
Companies: klout

Video Games And Influence

from the depends-on-who-you-talk-to dept

In our recent post about some old rockers complaining about music video games being no substitute for actually playing instruments (not that anyone claimed it was), one of our commenters, Comboman, made a rather amusing point concerning complaints against video games:

Video game critics claim violent games will make kids want to imitate the game and do real violent acts. Now they're complaining that music games will make kids NOT want to imitate the game and do real music?

To be fair, it's a different group of people complaining this time, but it is rather amusing.

Filed Under: influence, video games

Gullible Consumers Easily Swayed By Meaningless Tech Specs

from the oooooh,-1.21-jigawatts!! dept

I imagine this won't come as a huge surprise to many of you, but it appears that we're all influenced by the presence of tech specs on a product -- even if those specs are somewhat meaningless. A variety of separate studies showed that people would usually purchase the product with "more" specs, even if they were meaningless. One of the tests even had people create their own tech specs based on their usage, and they were still more influenced by the specs than the actual usage. Apparently, we need to get busy adding more "tech specs" to our products around here...

Filed Under: gullible, influence, tech specs

Howard Stern Learns: Going Behind A Paywall Is A Good Way To Lose Influence

from the the-price-of-influence dept

We've talked for years about the danger any media makes in focusing on setting up a paywall. In an age where openness and the ability to get others to spread and promote the content for you is often a key barometer of success, locking yourself up behind a paywall takes you out of the wider conversation, and by its very nature, decreases your overall ability to influence. The LA Times has an article noticing that this seems to be exactly what's happened with Howard Stern, who famously made the jump from terrestrial radio to satellite radio -- and in doing so, appears to have lost a large percentage of his audience, and with it much of his influence. Of course, he was paid handsomely for doing so, but Sirius almost certainly expected Stern to bring a larger percentage of his audience with him. Yet, as the article notes, Stern's waning influence due to the switch means that even he's having trouble getting the level of celebrity that he used to command to even bother coming on his show. Amusingly, the article also notes that the very reason why Stern claimed he was moving to satellite -- his troubles with the FCC -- may be contributing to his lack of influence with the new show. In the past, every time Stern got in trouble with the FCC, it boosted ratings, giving him plenty of free publicity. Without that foil, he loses much of the free publicity. Such is life behind the paywall, apparently.

Filed Under: howard stern, influence, paywall
Companies: sirius, xm

Remember All Those 'Influence' Ad Companies? They May Have A Patent Problem

from the ah-google dept

It was just a couple weeks ago that we (skeptically) noted that there were a bunch of companies trying to create systems to use things like a "FriendRank" to use "influence" to help advertise. However, it looks like those companies may have to deal with a bit of a patent block. Slashdot points out that Google has applied for a patent on just such a process to establish a sort of "FriendRank." Of course, the fact that there are a bunch of companies all trying to do this (prior to this patent application being published) certainly suggests that this is hardly the sort of breakthrough that requires a patent (though, it seems likely that those other companies are also applying for patents, meaning we may soon have yet another patent thicket).

Filed Under: advertising, influence, influentials, patents
Companies: google

New Push Towards Social Advertising May Miss The Fact That Influence Isn't Static

from the check-yer-assumptions dept

As more and more people are realizing that banner ads don't work very well as advertising, there's a rush on to find better alternatives. What's now getting a lot of attention is "influential" ads. News.com has two examples of new companies trying to put this into action. The first is a company called 33Across that tries to use some algorithm to figure out who is most "influential" online and target ads towards them, hoping they'll influence others. The other is a company with the most generic name for this space: SocialMedia, who is hyping up the fact that it's come up with a "FriendRank" to determine how influential someone is, and then try to get those influential people to effectively "endorse" advertisements that their friends see.

These approaches have plenty of problems, but the biggest one is the simple fact that studies are starting to show that the concept of "influentials" is overstated. Sure, people are influenced by others, but it's not because some officially designated "influential" influences them. Influence doesn't work that way. People don't trust people because they're suddenly considered influential. They trust people because they know that individual well and trust them on that particular topic. In other words, Bill could be influential on a certain topic to Jill, but won't be influential to others or on other subjects.

But, these services don't seem to do much to recognize that. Instead, they assume that people actually have some sort of universal "influential" rank. What they'll quickly discover is that this won't be very effective, because people won't be influenced by who these services think are influential. And, if anything, these efforts will decrease influence by inserting additional friction. If I were to see a friend in an ad for a product, before making me think that product is more interesting, it will make me wonder what my friend gets out of it, and whether or not he really believes in the product. I trust recommendations that come up unsolicited -- not those that are built into an ad unit.

Filed Under: advertising, banner ads, influence, influencers, social networks
Companies: 33across, socialmedia

Would You Believe People Trust Their Real Friends Over Bloggers?

from the oh-my! dept

In what may be one of the most pointless studies done in quite some time, a research firm has discovered to its own amazement that people tend to trust their own friends more than well known bloggers. Well, I should certainly hope so. Were there really people out there who thought that folks with high trafficked blogs actually held more sway than a personal friend? This is really nothing more than a retread of a (much more academic) report back in January noting that so-called "influentials" don't really have very much influence. What that study found was that "word of mouth" works, but where those recommendations come from tend to be somewhat random. So things bubble up from everywhere, rather than starting with well-known bloggers. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone, but after a few years of ridiculous media coverage suggesting that top bloggers have influence, it's nice to see a few reminders that influence is a much more democratic system.

Filed Under: bloggers, common sense, friends, influence