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Update July 22, 10:31 a.m: Twitters Fred Wilson in response to NowPublic crowning him as New York City's top news "influencer" in all matters digital: "My kids will not be amused." NowPublic, the self-described "crowd-powered media" startup, last night announced its ranking of what the company calls the top 50 "public news influencers" in New York City involved in the digital world. Here are the top 10 (see the full list). 1. Fred Wilson 2. Arianna Huffington 3. Sarah Austin 4. Steve Rubel 5. Noah Brier 6. Anil Dash 7. Gary Vaynerchuk 8. Jeff Jarvis 9. Liza Sabater 10. Loren Feldman Now that's over, a question: Is this a serious exercise or a stunt aimed at attracting the attention of the top 50 "public news influencers" in New York City? Not that those choices are mutually exclusive, but my money's on the latter. "Top of the pops" lists are a trusty, and distinctly old media, gimmick for hooking readers (which is partly why I'm blogging this). NowPublic, which is backed by $10.6 million from Rho Ventures, Brightspark and GrowthWorks Capital Ltd. and which earlier this month bought Guy Kawasaki's Truemors site, says it has developed a rigorous methodology for measuring a influence. The company collects stats from Google, Facebook, Flickr, Technorati and other sites to assess a person according to four criteria: online visibility; presence on user-generated content and social networking sites; interactivity and accessibility; and presence on microblogging platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr. It then weighs the results according to a scoring system that is the basis for its so-called MostPublic Index. "The goal of the MostPublic Index is to measure who is currently most effective in broadcasting their own personal brand online, as well as identify emerging players," says NowPublic CEO Leonard Brody in a statement. "Our MostPublic Index is a leading indicator and benchmark of who is really changing the way in which news is being produced and distributed, a core goal of NowPublic and its army of reporters." NowPublic's methodology for compiling its index isn't that statistically sophisticated, but the rankings are "legitimate" as the company defines its sample, says Alan Spector, a mathematician at Columbia University. Still, measuring a person's "influence," even as a function of how often someone's name shows up on the Web, is tricky since influence is difficult to define, let alone gauge. In other words, a lesser known person might have relatively few online followers, yet still carry great weight among other digerati, although the company seeks to address that by qualifying its index as focusing on people in the public eye. -- Alain Sherter For more on NowPublic see VentureBeat, TechCrunch and InformationWeek
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