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@BillyCorben, @AlexDonno790 among Florida’s most influential on Republican primary

By Andrew Grill on February 3, 2012 in Kred Analysis

Following on our study of South Carolina, Kred analyzed tweets about the Florida Republican presidential primary to find the state’s most influential media and people talking about the candidates. Many Florida-based Twitter accounts had higher Kred Influence among fellow Sunshine Staters than the candidates and well-known national media. We found that @BillyCorben, the fourth most influential Floridian discussing the primary, had more influence with fellow Florida citizens on the candidates than @RonPaul, @FoxNews, @CBSNews, @DrudgeReport and @Politico, among others.

We found several FL residents famous for reasons beyond politics whose views on the Republican candidates reached many responsive Floridians. These included filmmaker @BillyCorben, professional golfer @PaulAzinger, and MMA commentator and outspoken Ron Paul supporter @AlexDonno790.

This again demonstrates the importance of engaging local rockstars in communities to spread a message. Influence measures are essential for discovering people who can affect opinions among small networks of peers, friends and subject matter experts.

It’s also noteworthy that our Top 25 Florida influencers include three Spanish-language accounts: @Telemundo, @ElNuevoHerald and Univision journalist @LourdesStephen.

Top Florida and Global Influencers of FL Primary

Top Florida Influencers			Top Global Influencers
	@miamiherald Miami, FL			@huffingtonpost
	@telemundo Miami, FL			@mashable
	@nbcmiami Miami, FL			@barackobama
	@billycorben Miami, FL			@darrenrovell
	@talkmaster Naples, FL			@ap
	@ofa_fl Florida			@univision
	@alexdonno790 Miami, FL			@cnn
	@wesh Orlando, FL			@breakingnews
	@cfnews13 Orlando, FL			@thinkprogress
	@dwstweets Florida			@yahoonews
	@flfusionista Tallahassee, FL			@mittromney
	@therickwilson Tallahassee, FL			@cspanwj
	@kilroyFSU Tallahassee, FL			@smo4s
	@politifact St Petersburg, FL			@unclerush
	@anthony954 Tallahassee, FL			@nytimes
	@rumpfshaker Winter Park, FL			@washingtonpost
	@paulazinger Florida			@time
	@theosuwb Florida			@newtgingrich
	@elnuevoherald Miami, FL			@cnnbrk
	@floridajayhawk South Florida			@msnbc
	@jillebond Florida			@abc
	@lourdesstephen Miami, FL			@drmikemurdock
	@geoff9cow South Florida			@joenbc
	@repdennisross Lakeland, FL			@wsj

‘Florida Influence’ was determined by looking at every Twitter interaction between November 1 and January 20 that:

mentioned Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum; and
was replied to or retweeted by someone in Florida

We then assigned each interaction ‘Florida Influence Points’ based on on our Kred Scoring System and compared these to their global scores. We are able to do this through our partnership with Twitter; we have access to its full “firehose” of posts in real time as well as historical access to over 1,000 days of tweets.

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Porter Gale Joins Kred

By Andrew Grill on January 26, 2012 in Announcements

Today we are happy to tell you that one of the very best in the business at Influence and Outreach is joining Kred. Porter Gale will be our Lead Advisor on our new Kred Stars and Kred Leaders programs. In this role, Porter will be Kred’s chief evangelist among marketing executives and develop advocacy programs with our community of friends, peers and colleagues.

Porter was most recently VP Marketing at Virgin America where she transformed the startup airline into one of the most unique and responsive brands in the travel industry. An accomplished filmmaker as well as a marketer, she was previously Managing Partner and General Manager of Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners San Francisco.

“I’m excited to become part of Kred’s visionary team, which places deep analytics and refreshing transparency at the center of influence marketing,” said Porter Gale. “Kred is an essential marketing metric for brands that want to build and tend to close, trusting relationships with their audience. Kred’s community-based approach creates unprecedented opportunities to identify influencers and reach the small close networks of people that share their interests.”

“Porter Gale, through her work at Virgin, has developed a world class understanding of communities and how they are built,” said Jeffrey Hayzlett, CEO of The Hayzlett Group and Global Business Celebrity. “As one of the top social media marketers in the world, Porter has a record of developing campaigns that build strong brands and rich customer relationships. This is a big win for Kred.”

Porter frequently writes and speaks how personal influence creates business value and personal change. Check out Porter’s column on Huffington Post, follow her on Twitter, or view her talk at TEDxLaJolla on ‘The Power of Personal Networking’ below:

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@ToddKincannon, @fitsblog are top influencers of South Carolina on Republican primary

By Andrew Grill on January 19, 2012 in Kred Analysis

We always say that ‘We always have Influence somewhere’ and to put that to the test we took a look at Kred Influence in the presidential primary process. The question we posed is Who has most influenced South Carolina citizens about the Republican primary? South Carolina provides a particularly interesting case because it votes ‘solo’ on Saturday, January 21 without any other state primaries on the same day and it has a relatively small electorate (only 445,000 voted in its 2008 Republican primary).

Our study shows that local influencers – both individuals and local media – play a large role in the political decision making process in South Carolina. We identified many SC-area Twitter accounts with higher Kred Influence about the primary among South Carolinians than national media outlets or the candidates themselves. Further, these people are not necessarily well-known, connected to the candidates, or members of the media.

We determined ‘South Carolina Community Kred’ by looking at every Twitter interaction since November 1 that:

mentioned Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman or Rick Santorum; and
was replied to or retweeted by someone in South Carolina.

We then assigned each interaction ‘South Carolina Influence Points’ based on on our Kred Scoring System and compared these to their global scores. We are able to do this through our partnership with Twitter; we have access to its full “firehose” of posts in real time as well as historical access to over 1,000 days of tweets.

Here are the top influencers based in South Carolina and top global influencers of South Carolinans about the Republican candidates:

Top SC Influencer	Location	Twitter Name	Location
@ToddKincannon	South Carolina	@HuffingtonPost
@fitsnews	Columbia, SC	@newtgingrich
@postandcourier	Charleston, SC	@keder	At Chipotle
@wltx	Columbia, SC	@AP	Global
@thestate	Columbia, SC	@MittRomney	Massachusetts
@AndyParas	Charleston, SC	@CNN
@JamesAkersJr	Greenville, SC	@washingtonpost	Washington, D.C.
@ABCNews4	Charleston, SC	@murraygold	New York City
@TylerMJones	Charleston, SC	@RonPaul	Clute, TX / Washington D.C.
@Truthfully_Mike	Aiken, SC	@FoxNews	U.S.A.
@JsrRoger	SC since 1889	@thinkprogress	Washington, D.C.
@BTroutman_WCIV	South Carolina	@YahooNews	Santa Monica, Calif.
@snarkandboobs	South Carolina	@nytimes	New York, NY
@MatthewNordin	Myrtle Beach, SC	@RickSantorum	Pittsburgh and Washington
@GayPatriot	York, SC	@kesgardner	Texas, USA
@theisb	South Carolina	@Drudge_Report	US
@SCPrimary	Lexington, SC	@Newt2012HQ	Atlanta, GA
@jeffreypjacobs	Greenville, SC	@CBSNews	New York, NY
@DavidQuick	Mount Pleasant, SC	@cnnbrk	Everywhere

In particular, South Carolina attorney @ToddKincannon proved to be more influential among South Carolinians on the primary than anyone else, including the candidates’ own Twitter accounts and national media like @AP and @HuffingtonPost .

Another example: Greenville realtor @JamesAkersJr has more South Carolina Kred Influence Points about the Republicans than @CBSNews or @CNNbrk.

A lot of attention has been paid this election cycle to the social media influence of the Republican candidates. All of the candidates have unusually high Kred Influence; at this writing, @mittromney, @newtgingrich and @ronpaul have Kred Influence scores falling in a tight range between 966 and 973 — greater than 99.99% of the Twitter population.

This study proves that the real story really lies elsewhere. In an election environment increasingly dominated by big money television buys, a candidate can make an impact with ‘retail’ campaigning by engaging influencers over social media channels. The key is influence measures that can discover people in communities who can affect opinions among their networks of peers, friends and subject matter experts.

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What is Offline Kred?

By Andrew Grill on January 12, 2012 in Features

A person’s online reputation is often a reflection of their real-life status as an expert, celebrity or leading thinker. Many people we follow are personally known to us or we learned about offline. Drawing a truly complete picture of a person’s influence should have the ability to include real world accomplishments and activities.

This is why we’ve made integrating offline achievements with online identity a key part of Kred. With our Offline Kred feature, you can add anything to your Kred that you are proud of or gives you authority on a topic – from a college degree to charitable works to frequent flyer status. (After all, who is more authoritative on Travel than someone who has flown 1,000,000 miles!)

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To add yours, start at the ‘Get More Kred’ menu tab in Kred.ly and then click on the Offline tab. At the bottom of the page, an interface opens for uploading a certificate or other PDF document that shows your achievement. Name your accomplishment and add the number of points you think it is worth. (If you need a hint, we have a summary of our Offline Kred scoring on our Rules page or you can make an estimate based on other people’s Offline Kred visiblle in their Activity Statements.)

Once our team processes your request, a new transaction showing your Offline Kred will appear at the top of your Activity Statement.

Our points system is in the chart below. As examples, some of the first people we have given scores include:

@OrchMail – Built the first Cloud Computing Company (Avasta) – 40,000 points
@jaykrall – Business Development Director, Cision – 20,000 points
@tsipple – MBA George Mason University, School of Management – 10,000 points
@dblacombe – BA, Psychology – 2,000 points
@lynseybarber – Editorial Assistant at Haymarket Publishing – 1,000 points

If you wish, we can keep the certificate you send us Private. When you do this the Offline Kred line-item will be visible in your Activity Statement with the number of points assigned, and nobody can access the certificate you provided to support your accomplishment.

What do you think about Offline Kred and our scoring system? Let us know in the comments or tweet us at @kred.

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OperationSAFE nets 5,000 retweets for its Kred Wish in 24 hours

By Andrew Grill on January 3, 2012 in Kred Wishes

Within just a few hours of its launch, the Kred Wishes influence marketplace demonstrated the power of matching Influence with Giving when OperationSAFE received 5,000 retweets of its wish in less than 24 hours.

OperationSAFE provides humanitarian assistance to children in disaster areas around the world. On December 21 it made a Wish for a celebrity to to call attention to the still-challenging conditions faced by the young victims of last March’s tsunami in northern Japan. Overnight nearly 5,000 people retweeted @operationSAFE’s wish. This is a great example of how Kred Wishes creates generosity from your community to makes great things happen.

It’s still possible to help with a retweet or a Boost, which provides a higher level of support. In addition to retweeting the wish, a Boost is a commitment to automatically following the Grantor in your Twitter timeline and sending a Thank You tweet to the Grantor when a Kred Wish is fulfilled. Boosting is a small way you can chip in to make a dream come true and reward Grantors with increased influence.

If you would like to boost or retweet OperationSAFE’s Kred Wish, head over to http://kred.ly/wishes/498 today. And if you’re a charity-minded celebrity with some time to help, may we suggest you click over to http://kred.ly/wishes/498 too?

We’ll keep you posted on other great things happening in Kred Wishes. We are humbled by the amazing response to this wish and dedicated to building an influence marketplace that can help anyone make dreams happen.

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Kred Is Now Open To Everyone

By Andrew Grill on December 28, 2011 in Announcements

Kred is here and ready to go! Last week Kred opened the doors to anyone who wants to learn about their Influence and Outreach within Communities formed around interests and affiliations.

The Kred ship launches!

Have you already had a play with Kred? Many of Kred’s distinctive features started out as suggestions from our friends and colleagues, and we are always open to hearing your new ideas. Just tweet us at @kred or mail contact@peoplebrowsr.com.

Here are answers to some of the questions we get most frequently:

What’s with the dual score?
The larger number is Influence, scored on a 1-1000 scale. It’s the measure of the likelihood that your posts provoke actions from others. Outreach is a measure of your generosity shown by the frequency of your retweets and replies to others.

Is my score completely Transparent?
You can always see how your social actions count towards your score – and your friends’, too. Just click on the Activity Statement menu item.

How do you determine what Community I’m in?
We automatically place you in Communities based on the words in your Bio and the last 1,000 days of Twitter posts as well as the Communities of the people you talk to most.

What about my Privacy?
Visit your Privacy Settings any time to anonymize your actions. Learn more on our Privacy Page.

There is much more, so please have a walk through the site or download our Kred Guide.

We hope our new take on social influence is interesting, useful and fun. Tips & tricks for getting the most out of Kred will be a frequent focus of this blog. Don’t forget to stop by from time to time or subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you would like to learn about how our scores are calculated, we have a page describing our ‘Kred Rules’ that explains everything in detail. More questions? Tweet us up at @kred and we’ll get back to you shortly.

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Kred Wishes Launch Event and Holiday Party

By Andrew Grill on December 16, 2011 in Events

Last night a festive holiday crowd came to PeopleBrowsr Labs for the launch of Kred Wishes and a thought leadership panel discussion on Influence and Giving. We were honored to have as speakers Author / Consultant Porter Gale and Brian Solis, Principal at The Altimeter Group and Author of The End Of Business As Usual. Brian and Porter joined our CEO Jodee Rich on stage for a lively discussion about the benefits of generosity and sharing on social networks, and we were later visited by our good friends Tim O’Reilly and Roger Magoulas from O’Reilly Media.

Brian and Porter both talked about how being on social networks creates great opportunities for altruistic behavior. Porter gave an update on Amit Gupta, whose search for a bone marrow match has received a big assist from the generosity of his virtual network in sharing his story forward. Brian discussed the intersection of influence and generosity: “The real theme should be reciprocity… Influence isn’t for influence’s sake. It’s for generating outcomes.” This was the right discussion to have at this time of year!

We were very grateful for the support of local entrepreneurs that granted Kred Wishes at our event, including Public Bikes, RelayRides, Sockwa, Rickshaw Bags, Sol Republic and Smith Brand Bow Ties. A big thank you to all!

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How We Calculate Kred Outreach

By Andrew Grill on December 12, 2011 in Features

Our intent is to enrich the social media experience by enabling discovery of the people most likely to engage on a subject. Kred’s Outreach Level identifies people with a history of generously replying to lots of people and content.

Outreach Points

Kred is founded on the same building blocks that create strong interpersonal relationships: Trust and Generosity. In the Kred score, Influence represents Trust, or the ability for someone to create action with their content. Kred Outreach is the other half of the equation; it measures a person’s generosity in their online relationships.

Outreach Points are earned anytime you perform a generous act for someone else. Points are awarded for each of the basic actions that indicate generosity: replying, mentioning, retweeting or following a person. This can be seen in the chart below:

Converting Outreach Points To Kred Outreach

Outreach Points are accumulated to increase Outreach Levels. Each successive Outreach Level is progressively more difficult to achieve. When you have 100 Outreach Points, you reach Level 1; Level 2 requires 270 Points (170 incremental Points after achieving Level 1); and so on.

As it is for Kred Influence, we calculate unique Outreach Levels for every person in each of their communities. This means that someone who has an Outreach Level of 6 in the Global Community could be Level 2 in Social Media, or vice versa.

A person’s Outreach Level never goes down. We believe that generosity is infinite and so we plan to keep adding Outreach Levels as long as there is Kred!

On November 11, 2011 we looked at the data to find the minimum number of Outreach Points to achieve an Outreach Level across all of Twitter. This will scale differently within each community and we will update this chart on a monthly basis.

We hope our emphasis on transparency is helping you have a richer understanding of Kred and its uses. We would love to hear what you think about Kred and our approach to scoring. Add your voice to the comments below or tweet us at @kred.

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Kred Influence Scores: The 50,000 Foot View

By Andrew Grill on November 29, 2011 in Announcements, Features, Tips & Tricks

Transparency is one of Kred’s touchstones. We think its important that everybody be able to instantly understand how their scores are calculated and – more crucially – what they mean.

In our post yesterday, we discussed how we arrive at an Influence score. Here we’ll discuss the distribution of Kred Influence scores to provide a greater context for your score. After all, a score without context is like trying to understand whether a person is dressed appropriately without knowing the weather or the event they plan to attend.

Distribution of Kred Influence scores

To create context for Kred scores, we generated a report on the scores of people who have Kred Influence greater than 200. (We started at 200 because people above that score have a history of activity, connections and interactions.) We then divided everyone into ‘bands’ bounded by Influence scores of 50 [(201-250, 251-300... 951-1,000)] to build a distribution chart.

Note that all the Influence scores discussed here are for Global Kred, meaning for a user’s Influence across all of Twitter. Scores and distributions within interest-based Communities may vary.

About 42% of the people in the group we analyzed have Kred Influence scores between 201 and 450, 37% between 451 and 600, and 21% of above 600. At the top end of the chart, only 0.1% have Global Kred over 800.

At this writing, fewer than 200 people have the maximum Global Kred Influence Score of 1,000. Yes, Justin Bieber is one of our 1,000-point scorers. Other people who are well known for their influence on Twitter, like Lady Gaga, Ashton Kutcher and Barack Obama, are close behind.

For quick reference, percentile ranks of Kred Influence scores are spelled out in the chart below.

The charts in this post were created from our data on November 11, 2011. We anticipate that there will always be changes in how scores map to percentiles, though the basic shape of the chart will likely stay the same. We will continue to update on our data periodically.

What does this mean to you?

Our mission with Kred is to let anyone understand their influence and find people who are influential about their interests. By doing so, we hope that this enriches your social media experience.

If you feel that a score is incorrect, we are happy to audit your Kred any time. Just click on the ‘Request Score Audit’ at the bottom of any page on Kred.ly and we’ll be happy to review it.

Influence measurement is still in its early days; we think of it as the equivalent of DOS to today’s modern operating systems. We welcome your suggestions for improving Kred. If you have an idea or would like to suggest other studies of our data you would like to see, leave us a comment on this post or tweet us at @kred.

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Kred is Measurable Influence

Kred is composed of two scores: Influence and Outreach. We selected these because they reflect Trust and Generosity, the foundations of strong relationships.

Influence is the ability to inspire action. We measure this through by assessing how many retweets, replies, mentions and new follows a person receives. It is scored on a 1,000 point scale.

Outreach reflects generosity in engaging with others and helping them spread their message. We measure this through your retweets, replies and mentions of others. Your Outreach score is cumulative and will always increase. It is scored in Outreach Levels. The current top score is 11, and this will increase infinitely as scores accumulate because we believe the capacity for generosity is infinite!

See your Kred today at http://kred.com

Kred Blog

@BillyCorben, @AlexDonno790 among Florida’s most influential on Republican primary

Top Florida and Global Influencers of FL Primary

Porter Gale Joins Kred