http://www.chriszach.com/2009/03/12/my-question-about-media-cloud/ A digital download of my analog brain Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:38:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://www.chriszach.com/2009/03/12/my-question-about-media-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-112 EthanZ Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:07:37 +0000 http://www.chriszach.com/2009/03/12/my-question-about-media-cloud/#comment-112 Chris, the question about influence is an excellent one. It's not one that the tool is directly built to answer, but I can think of some experiments where we might combine MC information with other metrics out there that help determine influence. For too long, we've used link data as our influence metric, in part because it was really all we had - technorati and others did a great job of sharing that data, and we all had fun playing with it. But good traffic info is critical for these analyses, and data sets like Google Ad Planner are extremely promising. Where Media Cloud can be most useful, I think, is in tracing how ideas spread between different branches of media. Once we're able to build a graph of that ecosystem, questions of readership and influence will be able to be added in as weights on edges of the graph... In other words, you're absolutely on the right track - we're going to need your help and the help of other smart people to figure out how to combine our data with other sets to ask and answer the right questions. Chris, the question about influence is an excellent one. It’s not one that the tool is directly built to answer, but I can think of some experiments where we might combine MC information with other metrics out there that help determine influence. For too long, we’ve used link data as our influence metric, in part because it was really all we had – technorati and others did a great job of sharing that data, and we all had fun playing with it. But good traffic info is critical for these analyses, and data sets like Google Ad Planner are extremely promising. Where Media Cloud can be most useful, I think, is in tracing how ideas spread between different branches of media. Once we’re able to build a graph of that ecosystem, questions of readership and influence will be able to be added in as weights on edges of the graph… In other words, you’re absolutely on the right track – we’re going to need your help and the help of other smart people to figure out how to combine our data with other sets to ask and answer the right questions.

]]>