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Monday, July 22, 2013

Famous on the Internet



There is a website called Klout, which tells you how influential you are on the Internet, on a scale from zero to 100. Only a few people have ever achieved a perfect score, and then they fall away again. I believe they give you a 15 or a 20 just for signing up, but then they monitor your Internet presence – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, other social media, blogs, et cetera – and make your score more precise.


Some examples:


Justin Bieber’s a 93, or he was the other day. The Boston Bruins have the same score: 93. The New York Yankees have a 95.


Among my friends: one of my acquaintances (a former Brown student) has a score in the mid-60s. Partner has a pitiful 12. Two of my other friends are in the 20s.


I am currently a 37.


What does this mean?


Well, I consider that my score is pretty good for someone who has less than a hundred Facebook friends (it’s in the sixties, actually). Partner has less than twenty Facebook friends.


I love asking my student assistants how many Facebook friends they have. Invariably they have hundreds. One, a serious young man who’s going to be a junior next fall, has over 500; one of his classmates, a girl, has over 900; two recent graduates (I mentioned one of them above) have more than a thousand.


What does any of this mean?


It means: you can be famous on the Internet, if you know what you’re doing.


Just be careful.



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