Is Social Media The New PageRank?

As I was responding to a comment on my post about who we follow, I realized how I really used social media. In my comment, I mentioned that I use Google Reader and FriendFeed as information filters. For example, I am not fluent in all things Facebook, so I make sure that I review what Jesse Stay is sharing. I am also not a marketing expert, so I look at what Michael Fruchter is sharing. Ignoring the information filtering concept, an analogy popped into my head when writing my comment.

Social media is defining what good information is on the internet in the same way that Google’s PageRank was doing. PageRank was initially defining authority by how many people linked to your site or blog post. There has been some evolution in this, but the general concept is still used. Technorati uses this concept to define blog authority as well. The problem is that it is only a piece of the authority puzzle. Social media changes the idea a bit by allowing a user to share something they have found with various people. Then other users of the same site can tag the article as something worthy of reading by digging, liking and upvoting.

Granted, the mainstream has not really entered the social media game, but social media is pushing itself into mainstream networks like Facebook. Is social media search the way people will eventually find “authoritative” information or people? I am not saying that social media search is a Google killer, but could it be the place where people are looking for a specific nugget of “user approved” information?

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12 thoughts on “Is Social Media The New PageRank?”

  1. I don’t know if social media will ever be the ONLY way people find out info and/or people on the net. I think it depends on what you’re looking for. I find myself all across the board when it comes to social media: Facebook – friends, family; MySpace – annoying, but good for music; LinkedIn – business world; Twitter – news, staying in-the-know.

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  2. Nikki,

    I was talking more about social media search. Eventually, the social search sites will get much better in supporting various sites. Even though you may use LinkedIn for business purposes, there may be another site that you use for general searches. I definitely agree that each site seems to have a focus in a smaller area though.

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  3. Rob if you aren’t already following/reading Daniel Tunklang (http://thenoisychannel.com) I would strong suggest you do as he – and some others – are looking at both points you raised in a serious fashion.

    His most recent post on a TwitterRank also has a really good conversation going on about the process as well

    http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/13/a-twitter-analog-to-pagerank/

    His FF – http://friendfeed.com/dtunkelang
    His Twitter – http://twitter.com/dtunkelang

    You can always count on really good conversation happening on his posts

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  5. I was just thinking the other day that if I wanted to learn something about coding, particularly related to Web applications, that I’d probably ask Rob Diana about it. So there you go. 🙂

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  6. Steven,

    Thanks for the pointers to Daniel Tunkelang. I will be subscribing to him. I know of Endeca, so I am surprised I had not subscribed already.

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  7. Mark,

    Thanks for the endorsement. If you ever have question on programming and the web, don’t be afraid to ask. I would be glad to help.

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  8. I would say Social Media is the new word of mouth marketing online, as time goes by this may be one of the attribute for page rank.
    For example, lets say you’re in the world of building storm shelter.
    You manage to obtain some followers in a short amount of time. You give your followers great content on your subject of expertise, and they love it. You don’t have to do any seo work to your website, cause your followers will automatically link to you and will probably take you up on your service or product without relying on being found in the search engine or having to advertise on google.

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  9. Very interesting, I agree though that Google’s algo takes only a portion of the “authority puzzle” into consideration. I believe you are right in that if these social media tidbits are leveraged they will make for much more pertinent info.

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  12. […] Is Social Media The New PageRank? | Regular Geek regulargeek.com/2009/02/27/is-social-media-the-new-pagerank – view page – cached As I was responding to a comment on my post about who we follow, I realized how I really used social media. In my comment, I mentioned that I use Google Reader and FriendFeed as information filters. Social media is defining what good information is on the internet in the same way that Google's PageRank was doing. — From the page […]

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