The new PR A List via Traackr

Traackr has come out with a new “A List” of personalities on the internet for public relations. There are a number of people missing from the list as there always is from lists like this. Moreover, lists like this always generate controversy much like the list I did a year ago, and the aftermath of publishing the list. There are always going to be people who are missing from a list like this, people who are personally going to deserve the nod or attention because they have a resonance or made a connection with people that trumps anything else that can be accomplished on the internet.

The methodology that Traackr used is a combination of public data and private voting suggestion data. In some ways, this is simply another internet popularity list, which is not meant to take away anything from the winners, or those who made the top 25. The curious part though is that these 25 people were able to resonate with a particular audience, they spark conversations, they cover a specific topic and because they do both of those things they are able to generate page views to their sites and other sites that they interact with.

If you go through the top 10 portion of the list, what people should note is the many ways they communicate with people. Many have more than one blog, (the only exception to this is Jason Falls), they all used Linkedin, all but one uses Facebook, they all use FriendFeed, so there are many different ways of interacting with people and making the personal connection that social media is all about. Regardless of what people think, the responses were also checked by people in the field, which is also an important part of any survey data, does it hold up generally in a pool of peers. Traackr states:

This methodical approach encompasses all of the social media platforms from Twitter to Facebook through Friendfeed and blogs, which is what makes Traackr’s lists so relevant and useful. Traackr sees the value in each online space, and by focusing on numerous platforms, sometimes it enables us to identify influencers who are making huge contributions to their field but may not have been recognized yet. Our good friends at Corporate Eye put it best; we spot the “king-whisperers”. Source: Traackr Blog

The concept of these 25 as king whisperers is an interesting statement to make. People generally do things because they can or they have an ambition to be something in particular. The question for people though is how were the statistics skewed by the number of blogs and social networking sites that are being participated in rather than a true measure of influence. Is there ever going to be a way to get a true measure of influence on the internet when influence and internet fame is fluid and consistently changing? I do hope that Traackr does another one of these next year because it will be interesting to see how influence and authority changes over the course of a year. 2009 has seen many changes in social networking and how it should and should not be done by people and companies. 2010 promises much of the same kinds of changes in a very dynamic fluid and changing process that is internet fame in any space. My congratulations to the winners, it is obviously well deserved based on how people perceive people, but as always, there are people equally valuable in the social media space, and I hope to see them in the list next year.