The Most Public Index, Silicon Valley

My respect for NowPublic just fell through the floor. Is anyone, I mean *anyone* capable of looking out side the web development or indie publishing industry?

Come back with a list of scientists and researchers and everything else that has made (and makes) Silicon Valley great). They might be a little too BUSY to sit on Twitter all day like the sorry lot of us. (And awful Alexa rankings, I'm sure)

But no. Bloggers will get you traffic, so who cares about actual innovation?

Interesting list, but pretty predictable -- as lists are growing to be in this area.Very blog/publishing/dev-centric, too, as Eric said above. Not to mention that Alexa and Technorati are so unreliable as to be laughable, especially Alexa. 

Also, I know from personal experience that frequent Twittering and Google-ability aren't barometers of influence, per se... more just chattiness!

I'm bias - but I think this is a great list.

Well..... errrrrr...... I have no idea what I'm doing on it.

I'll take it though, smilling and nodding the whole time.

No fewer than 31 points. And I'm a nobody.

Is this a David Letterman joke or something?  You have to be kidding.

Hi there, thanks for mentioning me but there is a problem because of the ï in my name (that I am impressed you got right)

-the link to the page does not work because you linked to:
http://members.nowpublic.com/Lo%C3%AFc-Le-Meur

while the correct link seems to be:
http://members.nowpublic.com/loic-le-meur

Talking of which, everything on this page about me is wrong, can you add the correct feeds or let me add them I just created a profile on your site, my userid is "loic", basically just to be able to correct information about me, more if I find it interesting... thanks for at least giving me the opportunity to have correct info on this page.

Can somebody make an app where you can run your name through this and it will use the criteria to generate your score? Might be a fun project!

Hi Michael,

I've grown to have the opinion that the increasing proliferation of ranked lists are link bait (or twitter redirecting link bait). But since everyone else seems to have made one in the last few weeks, and got some traffic, you certainly have the right to do the same.

That said, the formula you use above is not a measure of influence at all.

It is a measure of activity by the person you are referring to, and a measure of their popularity. Many of these people make a living by making themselves appear  ubiquitous, well "followed" as in:"you follow me and I'll write a script to follow you."  And by sitting around all day answering everyone on twitter. I think a lot of people would agree they are all popular. I think a lot of people would also agree they aren't necessarily influential in a meaningful way, other than to keep the buzz going, which always includes a piece of their own brand because it's their jobs and it's how they make money or raise money. Nothing wrong with that, and it's great work if you can get it, but it's not influence.

I think in the interest of honestly you should rename the list to reflect "popularity and activity."  Influence is very hard to quantify, except in rare cases, in meaningful ways online. Mostly it has to be done by hand, in order to gauge whether the mention, link, RT, or conversation was expressing interest, disagreement or agreement or a change of view, or was just piling on with a popular media producer because the respondent thinks the popular person they were talking about might see their link, RT or whatever. Even so, as I said, you haven't really included any of the possible measures of influence. You have only included measures of popularity and activity by the poster themselves.

mary

Wow, those calculations are hard work!  Looks like I score about 50 points.  Shame you don't say how many points these other people scored... now you've got me curious ;)

One word:  Flawed

There is a big difference between visiability, attention getting, and influence

http://furrier.org/2008/03/13/naked-bloggers-dont-pull-your-pants-down-if-you-want-to-be-influential/

This is one of the 50 dumbest lists ever created.  To act as if Silicon Valley is only about new media and those who report on new media is ignorant and biased towards virtual self-promotion.  I don't see *any* of the true power players in the Valley on this list.  I suppose that Perez Hilton will be rated as more influential than Steven Spielberg in your LA edition.

Great... now we have to look forward to a bunch of douchebags promoting ILO: Index List Optimisation.

*Get your name higher than Max Levchin in NowPublic's index! Proven results! Also, money will fall in your lap from heaven! I made $900k this morning!*

And the next iteration will be a list that uses THIS list to build its index, completely poisoning the already heavily tainted well of data. This is like statistical analysis for a fourth grade science project -- on a par scientifically with those kits with the fake dinosaur bones you 'uncover' from the fake sand. It's a list made up of people in a certain class who fit into the artificial parameters of your made up formula. It's artificial in that there's nothing that says the formula has ANY bearing on what you're trying to show.

mtippett: What do you mean "meet the guy who made the Internet a household phenomenon". Just putting a name on a list and calling them a 'member' (WTF?) doesn't make them a member of anything but the list. And it certainly doesn't introduce him to anyone in any significant way. But it implies something more in the context it's used (they have a 'member' page - something associated in society with voluntary joining by the individual in question - as thought they 'belong' to something). It's a false association that teeters right on the brink of being disingenuous just for the sake of... what...? getting traffic? "...valuable, new information..."? Please...

No one's going to meet Marc Andreessen here. It's just an artificial link to an artificial 'member' page that's far less informative than the one at Wikipedia where we can all 'meet' Marc. Even a comparison to many other Top XX business lists isn't proper. There's no discourse, no examination, no peering into the subject. It's just "we made this formula, here are the results and a 'member' page for the lucky lucky winners".

Seriously, this list suffers mightily from it's reliance on spotty, presumptive methodologies and faux science. It would have been far more credible if it had been created the crusty old-fashioned way; a bunch of smart people sit around and argue out a list based on their knowledge, not a bunch of volatile numbers from a hacked-together formula which is too easily tainted by non-relevant influence. Why? Because influence is far more credibly measured in personal experiences by those inside the sphere of influence, anecdotal as it is, than in appearances on web sites (unless the web sites are large samples of humans saying "here's who influenced me in this regard").  It's like taking a blood sample from someone's mouth, you're gonna get far more than just blood in your sample... ("Top 20 people with streptococcus salivarious in their blood!")

In the era of stupid web apps/artifices/conceits, this is right up there. At least this week. Something equally worthless will likely come along soon enough to dethrone it. This isn't science, this is someone's 'bright idea' wrapped in the credibility of NowPublic. And credibility is something that is more easily lessened than it is gained.

"Yeah, that's right.  Who in their right mind would want to meet the guy who made the Internet a household phenomenon?  Your Grandmother must have some interesting bridge partners." - mtippett

Cool list, however on the automatically crawl page [i.e. the Channel page], the system seems to have assumed all the people on the list as a 'he'. E.g. on Charlene Li's page, 'This account has been set up for Charlene Li by NowPublic because he is a member of the Most Public Index for Silicon Valley.' (emphasis added)

Seems that all the pages started with the same sentence... so I assume it's something to do with the default setting.  Apologies with the bug is already filed and will be fixed :)

Thanks!