Google has plans to rank social influence. They currently have a patent pending for technology that ranks your social influence on sites like Facebook and MySpace.
How it would work? This article sums it up:
"The new technology could track not just how many friends you have on Facebook but how many friends your friends have. Well-connected chums make you particularly influential. The tracking system also would follow how frequently people post things on each other’s sites. It could even rate how successful somebody is in getting friends to read a news story or watch a video clip, according to people familiar with the patent filing."
While this seems like it would turn into a high school popularity contest, this is also good news for advertisers. They will be able to seek out the most influential people in a group or niche, therefore having more targeted and effective ads. Also, I'll admit it, I would be interested to see where I rank among my fellow Facebookers & Twitterers.
