If you’re on Twitter, Twitter has assigned you a “reputation score.”
It has a system in place to gauge who you follow and who the people you follow follow. It uses that information to suggest the “Who to Follow” avatars in the right-hand column of your profile.
So far, your score is still a secret. So why am I mentioning it?
Because I’m betting that Twitter will make it public very soon—simply because so many other sites are starting to score and grade us. At a tech conference last year, Twitter’s CEO said he’d like to see the Twitter scores visible to everyone.
Who Else Brands, Scores & Grades You
- If you’re on Klout.com, you have a score, from 0 to 100, largely determined by how often you tweet. You’re also “branded” with a one- or two-word description like networker, celebrity, thought leader or curator. Klout calls these its classes.
- Influencer Exchange, the new subscription-based software program that has a 14-day free trial I’ve been promoting, assigns a score to influencers in any one of thousands of niches, depending on who’s discussing them in traditional media or social media, and how important those people are. You can read more about Influencer Exchange here.
- On Quora, the question and answer site, users “vote up” or “vote down” your answers.
- On Yelp, readers grade restaurants, stores, nightclubs and even the local furnace repair guys with reviews of from one to five stars.
- Facebook doesn’t assign you a score, but how often you interact with your friends, and those who have Liked your pages, determines how often the information you share shows up in their news feeds.
- On Google, our websites are ranked, depending on a variety of factors such as how many other influential websites link to us, and how much content we provide.
How Your Score Might be Used
I can’t help but envision all of us eventually having our online scores seered onto the flesh on our hips with a hot branding iron.
The score could eventually determine if we’re the top candidate for a job, or we get a lucrative consulting contract, or a reporter from the New York Times calls us for an interview because we have a higher score than the other dozen or so people the reporter researched.
Do you know about other sites that score, grade or brand users? How do you think these sites will be used? And how much weight will people put on a reputation score? Are these “grading” systems missing more important things like a blog, the number of comments at a blog, and how often the blogger responds?
Tools That Can Help You:
I think whether with a number on a scale of 1-to-10 or other measurement, we’re already labeled with a reputation score of sorts. The challenge for credibility is at stake if those in measurement organizations want to be taken seriously. Is a recent revamp of Klout scores make us less worthy than we thought? “Likes” on Facebook are reportedly more valuable or less valuable depending on what industry article you read. And so it goes…
What will be our REAL reputation scores, or will they change with platforms trying to make more money for investors who are swayed by clicks?
A really good reputation “score” won’t rely on just one platform, or even a few platforms. It will be an amalgamation of numerous platforms, as well as publicity in traditional media–magazine articles you’re mentioned in, TV shows you’ve appeared on, etc. tf
Hi! Awesome article. It seems like you are rated everywhere.I wonder how kids and teens will think will thay have a bad reputation score.
I heard if you do not use twitter within a certain time frame you are subject to deletion.
Casey Mahoney Brad P
Casey, kids are already being “graded” by potential employers who are looking at their Facebook pages. Even though Facebook and other sites aren’t grading kids, that might be on the horizon.