Real Influence

So, Facebook has deleted more than a quarter of their users' accounts. These were deleted because they were deemed to be fake accounts.

In related news, Klout, the major social media scoring system company, will be shutting down on May 25th.

Marketers in the new world of social media try to maximize their reach and impact. The influence they attempt to generate or control is worth big money. According to Statista, this spend was almost 31 billion in 2016, which was a rise of almost a third from the previous year.

I know many social media marketing partners that struggled with their Klout score competitiveness. There were certain strata that people fell in, and for some reason, many were unable to really take off to those really great scores. But, as with Facebook, Klout had to try to calculate for non-real influence. For instance, we hear millions of Instagram followers have been faked for certain accounts. Many of the most successful marketing partners had these inflated numbers, which resulted in high Klout scores. However, they actually weren't reaching real people.

Real influence, which is being focused on more and more, is about connections. It is about connecting with real people. The mommy blogger with 300 *real* followers on various social media outlets has a real connection with her followers. They know her. They know her family. Her story. The followers are invested.

This goes back to the concept of the Human Scale. Fewer real connections are more likely more influential in the long term than many fake and loose connections. Invest in what is real.

More Equifax Breach Details

I'm having trouble comprehending the scope of this breach. The numbers are beyond the human scale. How much web penetration testing are your teams performing? What percentage of investment in quality should this take?

After speaking to my colleagues at other mid-size IT shops, it seems to be 0-10%. Arguments from risk can be made, using articles like this, that perhaps it should be in the 30-40% range.

Equifax reveals full horror of that monstrous cyber-heist of its servers

146 million people, 99 million addresses, 209,000 payment cards, 38,000 drivers' licenses and 3,200 passports