Deb Schultz in a wonderful "backlogged" post describes living in:
"a constant state of "behind on posts" - it's a dull thud in the back of my head."
One of my dull "thuds" grew from watching "INFLUENCE" appearing in multiple blog posts, particularly in Steve Rubel's "Become an Online Influencer by Modeling Tiger Woods" and Ross Dawson quoting Dave Snowden in writing about Enteprise 2.0 Adoption:
"If you aim to influence, but not design evolution you have more control than if you attempt to design an ideal system."
After meeting Heath Row at NYC Podcamp I discovered his Doubleclick report on "Influencing the Influencers: How Online Advertising and Media Impact Word of Mouth". And of course Harvard Business Review's making Duncan Watts "Accidental Influentials" the number 1 breakthrough idea for 2007 gets one's attention.
Hence I listened closely today to a CNBC interview exploring concern about Rupert Murdoch's increased political INFLUENCE if he succeeds in buying the Wall Street Journal.
The effect of INFLUENCE and how you map it has intrigued me since Rob Cross, Network Roundtable convenor and author of "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" helped Joe Cothrel and I craft an influence question for our Online Communities in Business 2004 Study. (The findings appear in Chapter 4 of our report.)
What I'm learning as my blogging colleague Victoria Axelrod and I fine tune our forthcoming research study, is that writing elegant questions to map "influence" networks is not as easy as I recalled working with Rob Cross and Joe Cothrel 3 years ago. In fact I've concluded it is both art and experience.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
