The Sunday Times has launched the ‘Social List’, using data from 4 key social networks – Foursquare, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook – to measure a person’s influence online.
Free to join, participants will need to link up whichever social networks they use and want to be included. Every morning The Sunday Times Social List will make its calculations.
People’s results will change daily as new people join and scores are updated.
The results page displays a list of the top 2000 most socially wealthy people at any given time.
Users can also see how they compare with friends and colleagues who have also signed up.
To help people see where they are in the grand scheme of things, they are allocated a rank when they join and a badge that goes with it.
This could change from ‘Fledgling’ through to the top spot, ‘Titan’, over time, depending on how well they are doing.
The Sunday Times Social List system adds up social networking activity and measures how much interest it generates amongst a user’s friends and colleagues in order to work out how well they score.
Gordon Thomson, Online Editor of The Sunday Times, said: “The Sunday Times has a strong tradition of publishing great guides and lists – and The Social List is our latest innovation, a dynamic, interactive chart which shows you where you fit into the new world of social media.
“As social media continues to change the way people find information and interact online, so The Sunday Times Social List reflects the growing influence of bloggers and Tweeters on mainstream publishing and gives everyone the opportunity to pit themselves against their peers and climb the rankings of the most socially influential.”
Jody Vogelaar, Head of News International Digital Marketing, said: “We are very proud of how engaged customers are with our journalists and content in the social space. We have more than one million followers across our Twitter feeds — a number that continues to grow each week. The social space is inherently competitive and we are taking full advantage of this by creating a fun and engaging piece of social entertainment that is very simple to get involved in.”
Created by VCCP, The Sunday Times Social List was designed so that “Anyone can join in and take their place on the List – no matter how active or idle they are on social networks like Facebook and Twitter,” says Colin Byrne, Creative Director. “We wanted to build on The Sunday Times’ history of publishing definitive lists that become part of popular culture, but create a list that’s not only useful, but something everybody can be a part of. It finally puts to rest the debate about which friends are the most active on Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook, and turns the everyday activity of updating your status and sending tweets into something far more competitive.”
How the points are tallied up
The Sunday Times Social List will award points to Participants for their Reach and Engagement (“Activity”) across the Networks. Points are awarded based upon Activities that have been pre-identified and form part of the Points System. The Activities and points are then entered into the computerised mathematical function (“Algorithm”) used to calculate the Participant’s place and the overall Social List ranking.
Certain activities will receive higher points weighting under the Points System due to their perceived sociability or influential nature.
Points are not awarded for the number of Networks a Participant uses. Points are awarded only for Reach and Engagement (defined below). A Participant can score as many points from Activity on one Network alone as a Participant who carries out Activities on more than one Network, provided overall Activity levels are the same in both cases.
Each new person who engages/ interacts with a Participant or a Participant’s content in a Network will increase the points awarded so long as the interaction is one of the Activities.
http://www.the-social-list.com
