Chicken or the Egg: Who Is Influencing Whom? Are "Who to Follow" Recommendations Influencing YOU?

[Angela Dunn @blogbrevity]

#SMCHAT for Wednesday, September 22nd, will take a look at the trend of "Who to Follow" recommendations. Bing just also added their own recommendations for "Who to Follow" via Bing Social. But, influence and popularity are different measures. Are those more popular being made more influential by the "Who to Follow" features? Are these features influencing you?

Twitter recently gave more weight to their “Who to Follow” feature in their new interface. Now, Bing Social is also recommending “influencers” to follow on Twitter as it relates to your search query. Suzanne Vara provides a nice overview of the implications in this post for Social Media Today.

1. Do you follow "Who to Follow" recommendations? Do you find them relevant?
2. Do you feel the algorithms that produce these recommendations are providing you with recommendations for those that are more influential or popular? See “Please repeat: Influence is not Popularity” by Brian Solis.
3. Are the algorithms recommending "whom to follow" only making the popular more popular?
4. How do you feel about being valued by a social number? Do you feel these numbers accurately reflect your “social capital”? See "Four Things You Need to Know About Influence" and "Social Capital: The Billion Dollar Digital Future."

These are some of the questions we will address in today’s #smchat. Follow the conversation at http://tweetchat.com/smchat.

Original Post on Blogbrevity's blog: If Influence is Not Popularity, How are "Who to Follow" Recommendat...