September, 2011

Paul Gillin

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Disconnected

Paul Gillin

Downed trees in Framingham (Photo via Framingham Patch). Today is my fifth day without Internet service. My connection dropped on Sunday during Tropical Storm Irene, when my cable provider, RCN, lost power. Five days later, my local RCN office remains one of the 3% of utility customers statewide who have yet to get power back. I’ve accepted this inconvenience with quiet resignation.

Cable 66
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The Trouble with Klout

Paul Gillin

Estimating influence is a delicate balance of art and science. People are drawn to quantitative methods because scores are easy to understand. The downside of reducing influence to a number, though, is oversimplification. Lately, I’ve been looking at Klout , the popular new tool that bills itself as “The Standard&# for influence measurement.

PageRank 109
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Measuring the Immeasurable

Paul Gillin

My post last week about the shortcomings of Klout got several thousand views and generated quite a bit of discussion. it also got me several e-mails from companies that claim to have built a better mousetrap than Klout. I haven’t reviewed these tools in detail just yet, but it appears that influence is a red-hot topic in PR and marketing circles right now.