Some of you probably read the Wall Street Journal article “Wannabe Cool Kids Aim to Game the Web’s New Social Scorekeepers” published last week. While we are incredibly honored to have been discussed on the front page of the Journal, I have to say I am pretty disappointed with the article overall. Specifically, despite repeatedly clarifying otherwise to the reporter, Twitalyzer is not a social scorekeeper. Why not, you ask?

Because we don’t think that social media is a game.

Yes, people are infatuated with their social scores, perhaps to the point of narcissism according to my brilliant friend John Lovett. And yes, companies like Klout are getting tons of milage out of their “perks” program for “social influencers” which is a great reminder that people love free stuff. But when we arrive at the point where people are “gaming the system” and are making hiring and firing decisions based on a calculated metric that may or may not be transparent, our big, blue robot starts screeching “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger Danger!”

From where I sit social media is a huge and growing business. A study reported by Business Insider recently found that 75% of small businesses will be doing more marketing in social media in 2011 and that as many as a third (34%) will be spending as much as half their time and budget leveraging social channels for marketing and customer acquisition.

Why?

Simple. Done right, social marketing works! The same study reported that nearly two-thirds (63%) believed that social marketing had increased sales and revenue and 40% of these folks said that the increase was “significant.” Who doesn’t want increased sales and revenue, especially from a channel that is essentially free to use (although that may be changing, according to All Things D’s Peter Kafka.)

At Twitalyzer we are dead serious about what we do and about the data that we provide. That is why do things like:

It may not seem like much, but at the end of the day we think it is important. See, Jeff and I aren’t just engineers who chose Twitter as a development platform because the API was (or at least used to be) free. We are digital measurement specialists with over a decade of experience developing, writing about, evangelizing for, and actually using analytics to help companies grow their businesses, online and off.

You may think it’s crazy, but we think it means something.

So I guess I apologize for not being more appreciative about the Journal piece, but Twitalyzer cannot be gamed. People have tried to run up their scores — and I can assure you, it can be done, at least for a short period of time — but in the long run any individual who “games” our system only hurts themselves. In order to jack up your Impact and Influence scores you will either need to cheat by “buying followers” or “pumping and dumping” or viciously abuse your audience with pointless RT’s, link spam, and other crap.

Either way two things will happen:

  1. Your followers will leave you, easily sensing that you are no longer genuinely engaged in Twitter
  2. Your other Twitalyzer scores — Generosity, Engagement, Signal, Velocity, etc. — will give you away

At the end of the day cheaters never win. What’s more, since we aren’t going to send you a free flight coupon, let you drive a car, or let you into a club because you have a high Twitalyzer score, there isn’t anything to win so why bother?

We don’t think social media is a game. If you do, great, there are dozens of services out there to stroke your ego, play to your narcissistic side, and generally deliver big numbers to make you feel good about your participation in the medium.

But if you are a business owner looking to better understand which of your efforts in Twitter have a measurable business impact, if you are allocating costly resources or paying an agency to represent your businesses interests 140 characters at a time, or you are one of the hundreds of thousands of companies who are planning to spend more time on social media marketing in 2011 we have two words for you:

Call us.

In the meantime we encourage you to take Trey Pennington’s advice about how to cultivate influence in Twitter: “Just use whatever gifts you have to help other people accomplish their dreams. If you’ll help enough other people get what they want, you’ll have all the influence you’ll need.”

I welcome your thoughts, comments, and criticisms of this post.

Sincerely,

Eric Peterson
CEO and Founder
Twitalyzer, LLC.