Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech and today we're having another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. This episode originally published on October twenty four,
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve. It's called tech Stuff has Clout
Speaker 1: and spoiler alert, cloud is no longer a thing, but
Speaker 1: when we recorded this episode, it was a thing. Clout,
Speaker 1: as you will learn, was all about social media influence
Speaker 1: and reach, and depending on your point of view, it
Speaker 1: was either an incredibly useful tool, a tool to turn
Speaker 1: people into narcissists, or something even more sinister than that.
Speaker 1: But spoiler alert again, it's all moot now because it's
Speaker 1: no longer a thing. Anyway, enjoy this lastic episode as
Speaker 1: Chris and I tout our cloud. So today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about clout and whether whether or not you
Speaker 1: have any uh and maybe you personally. You know that
Speaker 1: guy over there, he's got no cloud. Apparently I apparently
Speaker 1: I have some. Um the it's a not insignificant amount,
Speaker 1: though not nearly as much. As you know, like Justin Bieber.
Speaker 1: Uh so, what is Cloud? So? Cloud is this company
Speaker 1: out of San Francisco that was founded by Joe Fernandez
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and eight. He started to build
Speaker 1: it when he couldn't talk. Did you know about that?
Speaker 1: There's an article and Wired and I actually revisited it.
Speaker 1: It's it's called what Your Cloud Score Really Means. It's
Speaker 1: from Seth Stevenson. Actually read it in the print edition,
Speaker 1: but I went back and revisited it so I could
Speaker 1: throw in my electronic notes. Yeah. He uh, this is
Speaker 1: really really funny. He um had had had to have
Speaker 1: his jaw wired shut. That that's not funny. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's funny. But because he couldn't talk, he started, Uh,
Speaker 1: he started tweeting and using Facebook to communicate with people
Speaker 1: because it was driving him nuts that he couldn't talk
Speaker 1: to people, he said, And in fact he said he
Speaker 1: couldn't his mom didn't even understand what he was Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: uh so, I mean, thankfully he's apparently all better now.
Speaker 1: But I've seen I've seen interviews with him where he
Speaker 1: was not wired shut and he was talking. Yes, so
Speaker 1: he actually started uh, he actually started talking about or tweeting,
Speaker 1: tweeting about this, all sorts of different things about um
Speaker 1: restaurants that he had been to and making recommendations, and
Speaker 1: you know, again kind of iron as they point out
Speaker 1: the art kind of ironic. He couldn't open his mouth
Speaker 1: and go eat there, but basically product recommendations. He started thinking,
Speaker 1: because he had had some experience with with statistics, and
Speaker 1: started thinking, you know, how many people am I talking to?
Speaker 1: And and to who are they talking and how much
Speaker 1: influence do they have over people who buy stuff or
Speaker 1: go shopping or go out to eat with these different people.
Speaker 1: And that's when he started. He started making some rudimentary calculations,
Speaker 1: rudimentary by the terms of clouds algorithms today, and started
Speaker 1: putting together this idea of you know, how much influence
Speaker 1: do people have in the social media? So that's this
Speaker 1: is really an interesting concept to me because some people
Speaker 1: would have you believe that influence can be measured solely
Speaker 1: by things like the number of followers you happen to
Speaker 1: have on social networks. But Fernandez's point is that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. You could have lots of people following you,
Speaker 1: but if no one's really paying attention to what you
Speaker 1: have to say, and they're following you anyway, then your
Speaker 1: influence isn't that great. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who could potentially hear you, but no one's really
Speaker 1: listening to you, and that's a problem problem. So you
Speaker 1: could you could conversely have relatively few followers compared to
Speaker 1: someone who has millions, like you know, Justin Bieber's got
Speaker 1: millions of followers on Twitter. Now he happens to be
Speaker 1: very influential on Twitter. So that's I've heard that. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a bad example. But let's say let's say
Speaker 1: you've got someone who's got over example. Let's say the
Speaker 1: same You've got someone who's got over a million followers,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, their cloud score is not that high.
Speaker 1: The reason for that might be that perhaps a lot
Speaker 1: of those followers aren't real people. They might be boughts,
Speaker 1: So that could be one factor. But what Fernandez wanted
Speaker 1: to do was measure how much impact a person has
Speaker 1: on their various social circles and on the web in general. Uh,
Speaker 1: not just how many people are following them and those
Speaker 1: are those are two different things. So he built this,
Speaker 1: uh this company and this algorithm helped to Yeah, the
Speaker 1: His side, of course, is called cloud with a k UM,
Speaker 1: and since its inception there have been other imitators. I
Speaker 1: don't know some of them were actually out beforehand. And
Speaker 1: Twitter itself is working on its own implementation of a
Speaker 1: similar software that would allow you to see, like when
Speaker 1: you tweet, how how much of your audience are you
Speaker 1: actually reaching when you send out a Twitter message. And
Speaker 1: this really applies to people who have lots and lots
Speaker 1: of followers. So for example, if you take me, I
Speaker 1: don't have you know, thousands and thousands of I've got
Speaker 1: like four thousand followers, which that's that's a that's a
Speaker 1: lot for me because I'm like, well, I'm just a guy,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a guy that four thousand people follow
Speaker 1: I hope that I'm interesting enough to justify that. But
Speaker 1: there are other people out there who have millions of followers,
Speaker 1: but they don't know necessarily how many of those people
Speaker 1: they're reaching when they send out a message. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: just for independent confirmation, I am sitting here directly across
Speaker 1: from from Jonathan and he is in fact just a guy. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: I'm just a guy with a sixty five cloud score
Speaker 1: though that's true. And then and part of the reason
Speaker 1: that that Jonathan does have a five Cloud score, and
Speaker 1: that's of the day we're recording this. These things do change.
Speaker 1: It could be, it could be it could be in
Speaker 1: the low forties. By the fame of this Podcas goes out,
Speaker 1: part of the reason that that Jonathan has a cloud
Speaker 1: score of sixty five is because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people following him. But he's also well networked with
Speaker 1: people also in the tech world. So there are people
Speaker 1: who share his tweets with other people. That's part of
Speaker 1: the score. There there are people who who talk back
Speaker 1: to him who also, boy do they talk back to me?
Speaker 1: Shut up? You? Uh see what I did there? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do. Who There are people who have conversations with
Speaker 1: him on Twitter, let's go with that, who are also
Speaker 1: influential in the Twitter sphere and on cloud and therefore, uh,
Speaker 1: that boosts his reputation um and his his ability to
Speaker 1: to network with other people, and so therefore he has
Speaker 1: a higher score than than maybe some other people with
Speaker 1: more followers. This might sound really familiar to you, especially
Speaker 1: if you are familiar with like Google's page rank algorithms
Speaker 1: what used to be called page rank. Anyway, Uh, the
Speaker 1: idea that Google would use this complex formula to determine
Speaker 1: how well various sites would rank and search for any
Speaker 1: particular term that you're searching for. So when you're searching for,
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh, cool tech gifts for the holidays,
Speaker 1: then Google would look through its use its algorithm and
Speaker 1: rank all these pages that relate to those search terms
Speaker 1: and give you the highest ranked ones. And that ranking
Speaker 1: is based on lots of different factors, including how many
Speaker 1: websites link into it, and how old that particular website
Speaker 1: that you're looking at is, and and other factors as well.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that goes into it. This
Speaker 1: is the same idea except for people instead of pages.
Speaker 1: It's it's how well a person ranks, partly due to
Speaker 1: their behavior online, partly due to their network that's around them,
Speaker 1: partly due to how many people are following them. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different actors at play. There's actually
Speaker 1: a web page on cloud site that goes into the
Speaker 1: different factors that that they will admit to. Now, they
Speaker 1: don't give you the nuts and bolts. It's a secret
Speaker 1: sauce if you will. Clearly, you wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: able to give out all the information, because then people
Speaker 1: would game the system like crazy just to get their
Speaker 1: cloud score up, which is not the purpose of the
Speaker 1: of the site at all, or to to start a
Speaker 1: competitor to another good point. Um, yeah, let's let's talk.
Speaker 1: I'll mention a little bit more about what what they say, Uh,
Speaker 1: competitors are critics, I should say, actually criticize cloud because
Speaker 1: it's usually the comparison I've seen is to a credit score,
Speaker 1: because the credit reporting agencies don't tell consumers what's actually
Speaker 1: going into your score. Um. And in the in the
Speaker 1: case of credit, it has to do with you know
Speaker 1: how much you spend, how quickly you pay it back? Um,
Speaker 1: you know how many cards credit cards you have? Are
Speaker 1: it accounts, lines of credit that you have opened, and
Speaker 1: lots of different little proprietary things, and each of them
Speaker 1: has a little different mix. Well, the cloud is sort
Speaker 1: of the same way. They tell you roughly what goes
Speaker 1: into it, but they don't tell you exactly how much
Speaker 1: weight each one carries. Um. It's based primarily on on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook. Um, this is not really much of
Speaker 1: a secret. Things like mentions of your name and Facebook posts. Um.
Speaker 1: People who who are engaged with a lot of brands
Speaker 1: on there, the likes that you have, the TV shows
Speaker 1: you like, UM, the the UH stores that you like
Speaker 1: on Facebook, UM, the number of comments you have, people
Speaker 1: who subscribe to you, uh, the number of friends. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's a metric and obvious metric. You know, how many
Speaker 1: people follow you on Twitter, how many people follow you
Speaker 1: on Facebook, people who mention you on on Twitter, or
Speaker 1: people who um people you reply to and people who
Speaker 1: reply to you shows your engagement with that network. They've
Speaker 1: also extended it you to Google Plus, LinkedIn, four Square, Wikipedia, UM,
Speaker 1: things on on LinkedIn. UM they go by your reported title.
Speaker 1: So if you say you're CEO of the World then
Speaker 1: and guess that that would probably help your cloud score. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: although I think that's probably hard to verify. These are
Speaker 1: relatively new in the in the cloud world. These these
Speaker 1: UM these items, because before what it was really looking
Speaker 1: at was Twitter and Facebook mainly, First it was Twitter,
Speaker 1: and then it was there in Facebook then and it
Speaker 1: also linked You could choose to link stuff to your
Speaker 1: your cloud. If you create a cloud account, you could
Speaker 1: choose to link things like Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and
Speaker 1: other platforms as well. Now it looks at these other
Speaker 1: elements like Wikipedia, or if you are mentioned in something
Speaker 1: like the New York Times, so that it can determine
Speaker 1: all right, well, um, you know you're getting press, people
Speaker 1: are writing about you, so then that means you are
Speaker 1: more in Floyd Childen someone who is not getting pressed,
Speaker 1: So that would impact your score as well. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you want to sign up for Cloud, you would sign
Speaker 1: up using your Twitter or Facebook information. Basically, once you're
Speaker 1: logged in, you can you can uh sign up for
Speaker 1: Cloud and it will access your account um and it
Speaker 1: will say, okay, do you want to add your other accounts?
Speaker 1: Do you want to add these other accounts? And they're
Speaker 1: even more than they're mentioned here, things like Flicker and
Speaker 1: other accounts and things um and so yeah, what what
Speaker 1: Jonathan said is is true. They're also measuring this information
Speaker 1: whether or not you sign up for Cloud. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you're you're if you have a Twitter account and it's
Speaker 1: public and you are sending out messages, that's public record.
Speaker 1: That's stuff that anyone can access. So what Cloud does
Speaker 1: is it will automatically start to index you and look
Speaker 1: at how other people are responding to you. So whether
Speaker 1: you have signed up for Cloud or not, you may
Speaker 1: have a Cloud score and uh, you know the we
Speaker 1: have we mentioned what the range of scores is. It's
Speaker 1: between one and one hundred. So the higher your cloud score,
Speaker 1: the more the more cloud you have, and the more
Speaker 1: influence you would theoretically have over the web based upon uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the algorithms assessment of you. Most people are
Speaker 1: not like you would think the average would be fifty,
Speaker 1: but the average is really closer to the twenties range.
Speaker 1: And it's that the people who are fifty or higher
Speaker 1: are are assumed to be more influential in whatever fields
Speaker 1: they've been identified as being experts in. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I was gonna say, if you sign up,
Speaker 1: you'll find out that they ask you, hey, what are
Speaker 1: you influential in? Yeah, And it turns out like if
Speaker 1: I log into my cloud and I'd look to see
Speaker 1: what I'm influential in. There's some things you would expect,
Speaker 1: you know, like technology is up there, which that that
Speaker 1: makes sense. I do a tech podcast, I write tech
Speaker 1: articles for a website. Uh, that makes sense. There are
Speaker 1: other things like Atlanta restaurants. Huh, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: I was that influential with Atlanta restaurants. I should get
Speaker 1: better tables darn it. Um. But yeah, there there are
Speaker 1: other things that I look at on that people have
Speaker 1: identified me as being influential, and some of them maybe jokes,
Speaker 1: but that's that's kind of interesting to me. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think I think here is a good point to
Speaker 1: point out. And then there are critics and their proponents
Speaker 1: of cloud, just like anything else. But um, I think
Speaker 1: it's a good point to go right down the middle
Speaker 1: and say, look, this is what one person and his
Speaker 1: company have done, you know, as as as Joe built
Speaker 1: this company up, this is how they chose to measure people.
Speaker 1: And it's not it's it's based on one system, so
Speaker 1: it's not really I think, Uh, it was a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, or was a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: last year where they where they rejiggered the algorithm, and
Speaker 1: was this year? It was this year. It was late
Speaker 1: some earlier this year when they changed it because my score,
Speaker 1: my score skyrocketed. I had been around sixty two and uh,
Speaker 1: and then I jumped all the way up to sixty nine.
Speaker 1: I was almost seventy. It was very close to seventy,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, whoa, how did that happen? Holy cow?
Speaker 1: I'm more and I started comparing myself because it cars.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a bit of an egomaniac, you know,
Speaker 1: I admit this, and so I was like, let me
Speaker 1: see what my good friend I as actar of this
Speaker 1: weekend tech Let me on tech news today. Let me
Speaker 1: see what how he ranks. Oh, he's he's at sixty five.
Speaker 1: He's lower than I am. Gosh I as and of
Speaker 1: course now I think he I think he ranks rightfully
Speaker 1: so above me, because these things, do you know? It
Speaker 1: was it was like an initial shock because people's scores
Speaker 1: changed pretty dramatically. Some went up quite a bit, some
Speaker 1: went down, and then it's been slowly kind of readjusting
Speaker 1: to where it needs to be based on all this
Speaker 1: new information. Um, and you know this, this could be
Speaker 1: really challenging because you're building an algorithm that needs to
Speaker 1: identify people, and it needs to be able to make
Speaker 1: sure it links to the right person, because, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, there's some folks out there who share the
Speaker 1: same name as other people, and so you have a
Speaker 1: lot of false positives. For instance, if you were to
Speaker 1: search Jonathan Strickland in the metro Atlanta area, Uh, some
Speaker 1: mug shots to be popping up and none of them
Speaker 1: are me today today. Okay, but let's be fair. Today,
Speaker 1: here's the recording of this podcast of those mug shots
Speaker 1: would be me. Who knows what tomorrow may brain. But
Speaker 1: but that's the thing is that I could end up
Speaker 1: identifying this stuff like, oh, John, this is being written
Speaker 1: about in criminal newsletters. That's odd. But I guess that
Speaker 1: ad just his cloud score, Like, no, that's not me.
Speaker 1: That's another Jonathan Strickland and the same spelling and everything.
Speaker 1: But you know, so the algorithm has to take that
Speaker 1: stuff into account. The other thing that's kind of a
Speaker 1: controversy with clout is how companies are using clout in
Speaker 1: various ways. Guys, it's Jonathan from two thousand nineteena interrupting
Speaker 1: this classical episode because I don't yet have quite enough
Speaker 1: clout to get away with this without taking a break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. So what is cloud other than
Speaker 1: other than influence? A measure of influence in the social
Speaker 1: media world. An idea of of that, what does cloud
Speaker 1: get you? Very little or or al or a lot,
Speaker 1: depending on how high your cloud already is. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cloud is a weird thing. In some cases, all
Speaker 1: it might get you is bragging rights in the sense
Speaker 1: of you know you, you measure your cloud against your buddy,
Speaker 1: like your buddy i azactar of this weekend tech news today,
Speaker 1: and then you say, hey, look at that, or you
Speaker 1: may say cloud scores going up because you mentioned in
Speaker 1: very well and deservedly. So the man does good work.
Speaker 1: As much as I joke. He he is an actual
Speaker 1: friend of mine. Uh so, maybe not after this podcast,
Speaker 1: but he. You know, the these these numbers for a
Speaker 1: large part of the population may not mean much, although
Speaker 1: it can tell you how effective you are online. So
Speaker 1: in a in a sense, it's doing what it's supposed
Speaker 1: to do. It's telling you what your impact is. And
Speaker 1: if your impact is low, you might say, you know what,
Speaker 1: you might be cool with it. You might be saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just use this for fun, to stay
Speaker 1: in touch with my friends. That's all I use it
Speaker 1: for that. I don't care. But if you're trying to
Speaker 1: get a message out there, then what it's telling you
Speaker 1: is your message is not being heard. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not punishing you. This number is related back to that algorithm,
Speaker 1: and if you want to make sure your message is
Speaker 1: heard by more people, you need to look into ways
Speaker 1: of delivering that message in in a in a way
Speaker 1: that that interests people, that gets other people talking, that
Speaker 1: goes beyond just your immediate circle of followers. And if
Speaker 1: you're able to crack that code. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I do not have the secret sauce for that. There
Speaker 1: are some messages I send out there that go bonkers
Speaker 1: and I think, Wow, that's amazing, and then I and
Speaker 1: then I'll sit there and I'll craft what I think
Speaker 1: is the most brilliant, funny, uh timely tweet of all time,
Speaker 1: and I send it out and no one replies, no
Speaker 1: one favorites, no one retweets. So I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: have that secret sauce. Definitely you need to ask people
Speaker 1: who have a much higher cloth score than I do.
Speaker 1: But if your score is low, that could be an
Speaker 1: indicator that, hey, you need to change things so that
Speaker 1: you can make sure that whatever message you're sending out
Speaker 1: there is being heard by the right people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so and and for somebody like um, you know,
Speaker 1: for politicians for example, yeah, um, this is incredibly important.
Speaker 1: Or entrepreneurs want who get their name out. And then
Speaker 1: there's the the other group of people who are are
Speaker 1: short of in between there there, they're doing this shorter
Speaker 1: because they want to, and then they might be getting
Speaker 1: perks are cloud perks. So if you are an influential person,
Speaker 1: then you are an attractive person for certain brands. If
Speaker 1: you are influential in a particular field. Let's say with me,
Speaker 1: I'm apparently I'm influential one technology and Atlanta restaurants. Then
Speaker 1: let's say an Atlanta restaurant opens up and they are
Speaker 1: cloud savvy, they understand how cloud works. They and they know, Hey,
Speaker 1: if we convinced this guy to come into our restaurant
Speaker 1: and eat our food, and we really pull out all
Speaker 1: the stops, he's gonna go out and he's going to
Speaker 1: talk about this incredible experience he had. And because his
Speaker 1: influence is high in this area, that means we could
Speaker 1: see a return on that investment. We could see people
Speaker 1: come in because we tapped the right person to talk
Speaker 1: about this, and that can go across all sorts of industries.
Speaker 1: So that being said, I'll come out and say it
Speaker 1: right now. I have not received any cloud perks. I
Speaker 1: am not I don't use cloud to get cloud perks.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I would ever use one. If
Speaker 1: one came along that was just unbelievable, and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is exactly why I need and exactly how I
Speaker 1: need it. I would probably do it, but I've never
Speaker 1: had that. I've never had that happen. Yeah. The companies,
Speaker 1: the companies involved in cloud perks are generally people who
Speaker 1: want to do some promotion. That's it's pretty simple. Um.
Speaker 1: And so once you get your cloud score up to
Speaker 1: a certain level, and it could it depends on what
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, it depends on the company. Like some
Speaker 1: companies will say, Okay, anyone who's below a seventy five,
Speaker 1: we're not interested in because that's not that's not worth
Speaker 1: the time it would take to do this. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you might, um, you might pass let's say thirty, and
Speaker 1: they'll say, hey, people with cloud score of thirty, we'll
Speaker 1: give you a coupon for a free UM six pack
Speaker 1: of our new soda flavor. Go ahead and redeem it
Speaker 1: at your local store, you know, tell us where to
Speaker 1: mail the coupon. So they mail the coupon and you
Speaker 1: get the beverage and you try and you go, hey,
Speaker 1: this stuff is pretty good what they're hoping. But there
Speaker 1: is no requirement to do what they're hoping is you're
Speaker 1: going to share that experience with their friends. Hey, I
Speaker 1: was Uncloud. They sent me a coupon. I tried this stuff.
Speaker 1: It tastes like a combination of mangoes and feet, But
Speaker 1: I happen to like the taste of mangoes and feet.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna, you know, tweet this on Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and put it on my Google Plus account and
Speaker 1: mentioned it on LinkedIn. That you just did exactly what
Speaker 1: the promoters were what apparently my choice of mangoes and
Speaker 1: feet was not just having I just want to do
Speaker 1: something so trying not to think about that taste right now.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say something silly. I don't like
Speaker 1: mangoes and I really don't like feet. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so um so that's essentially what they're hoping that that
Speaker 1: will say that clout for it for its uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just to to promote its own credibility here. And I
Speaker 1: feel like it's fair to mention this Cloud says there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no obligation on your part as a cloud participant.
Speaker 1: If you get a perk to promote it in any
Speaker 1: way at all, you can take them up on the perk.
Speaker 1: You can decline the perk. You can tweet about it
Speaker 1: or not. Um and uh, and you know it's up
Speaker 1: to you whether you you could say, hey, this stuff
Speaker 1: is nasty. I don't ever want to see it again.
Speaker 1: I hope they pull it from the market fast before
Speaker 1: I sue them. UM, you know that that is completely
Speaker 1: up to you. But it it depends on partially on
Speaker 1: your cloud score, and it depends partially on generally, and
Speaker 1: it depends partially generally on what areas you are influential.
Speaker 1: And I would assume that uh, President Obama and Justin
Speaker 1: Bieber probably you know, get all the cloud perks they want.
Speaker 1: They probably can't. Don't take anyone up on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also we should also point out that, UM, with
Speaker 1: perks comes the responsibility of revealing the fact that you
Speaker 1: have received this as a perk, because, uh, there's an
Speaker 1: ethical problem if you don't do that, and a legal
Speaker 1: problem too in the United States. Um, you know the
Speaker 1: the quote unquote mommy bloggers, um without cloud this was
Speaker 1: going on for a while and they were not revealing
Speaker 1: that they had received this as again to its credit cloud.
Speaker 1: UH encourages you to remember, if you're going to post this,
Speaker 1: say hey, I got it free because I was here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yes, the clouds not condoning unethical behavior, which
Speaker 1: you know that's important to remember because their critics who
Speaker 1: kind of overlook that, UM, And you know, that's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that what you get for it
Speaker 1: first before we got to the critics. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: it's gotten. It's become a great tool for UH companies
Speaker 1: to try and court influencers. Chris and I have a
Speaker 1: little bit more to say about clout, but before we
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take another quick break. In some case,
Speaker 1: says it may be that a company says, hey, this
Speaker 1: person is really influential in the field that we're involved in.
Speaker 1: Let's not just give him a perk, Let's hire them
Speaker 1: to do something for us. So in that case, you're
Speaker 1: talking about, like you might have a freelancer out there
Speaker 1: who is just an incredible influencer in a particular industry,
Speaker 1: and then this company says, this is who we need
Speaker 1: to get to represent our brand or to message out
Speaker 1: something about our brand, UH, and we're going to actually
Speaker 1: hire them. Maybe it's a contract for a certain number
Speaker 1: of appearances, or maybe we actually give them a job
Speaker 1: offer and that's another way that people are using cloud
Speaker 1: Some companies, particularly advertising firms, marketing firms, places where uh
Speaker 1: your ability to get a message out is clearly an
Speaker 1: important part of your job, they are looking at cloud
Speaker 1: scores because if you if you're going into an ad
Speaker 1: agency and you're saying, hey, I know how to message
Speaker 1: out information. I am. I am the guy that you
Speaker 1: need or the lady you need to hire for this
Speaker 1: position because I know what I'm doing, And then they
Speaker 1: look up your cloud score and it's like twenty two.
Speaker 1: They'll say, hey, um, can you show us a better
Speaker 1: example than your cloud score, because according to this, you
Speaker 1: are not getting your message heard, and and that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's also drawn some criticism. People have said, well, how
Speaker 1: is that fair? And the counter argument is to say, well,
Speaker 1: if the algorithm is measuring how well a message is
Speaker 1: going out across networks and the and the score is
Speaker 1: really low, how would it be fair to this company
Speaker 1: to hire someone who is not as good as a
Speaker 1: different uh potential employee who has a much higher cloud score,
Speaker 1: who has proven that they are able to get a
Speaker 1: message out across networks? Yeah? Yeah, the the cloud score
Speaker 1: has come into hiring practices recently, I've seen articles written
Speaker 1: on it. And you know, people who were unaware of
Speaker 1: the cloud score, you know, they hadn't signed up for it,
Speaker 1: didn't know it existed. Uh, sort of taken aback by
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a cloud score. Yes, you
Speaker 1: are being measured. Um, that's a little uh, that's a
Speaker 1: little weird, I think for some people, um and people
Speaker 1: without knowing. And it's again the reason they compare the
Speaker 1: cloud score to the credit credit score is that without
Speaker 1: knowing exactly what you're being measured on, it's difficult to
Speaker 1: improve on it, um and be a bit of a
Speaker 1: treadmill to to constantly try to figure out what to
Speaker 1: say next and how often to say it, exactly what
Speaker 1: way to fit in, what time to say it, because
Speaker 1: there are you know those are that That's something I
Speaker 1: actually take into consideration. You see, I, Chris and I
Speaker 1: we don't just uh, interface with social networks for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we have to. We do it for our text
Speaker 1: off brand, right, because because we want we want people
Speaker 1: to know what we are doing as tech stuff. We
Speaker 1: want to stay engaged with our audience. We want to
Speaker 1: know what they're thinking. So uh, but there comes a
Speaker 1: time where you're like, should I post this now because
Speaker 1: my audience might be asleep, you know, and then you think, well,
Speaker 1: considering how many of us are tuned into the social
Speaker 1: networking crazes out there, a message that was posted four
Speaker 1: hours ago may never be seen. You know. If I
Speaker 1: log into Twitter and there's a message that was posted
Speaker 1: about four hours ago that I think would have been amazing,
Speaker 1: I might never get to that because too page back
Speaker 1: through that many tweets, uh, is a daunting task. I'd
Speaker 1: have to clear out a half hour five minutes of
Speaker 1: my schedule just to do that. So you know, that
Speaker 1: also comes into place when you should post if you're
Speaker 1: trying to if you're if you're really trying to use
Speaker 1: social networking to get a message out. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're just using social networking to say I watched that
Speaker 1: episode of Blah Blah blah last night and it was phenomenal,
Speaker 1: it may not matter that you posted at two in
Speaker 1: the morning or eight am or four pm. It may
Speaker 1: not have any impact there, and that might be fine
Speaker 1: for you. There's nothing wrong with that. Um. The other
Speaker 1: element of this is, unlike the credit score, the cloud
Speaker 1: score is something that I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: are not aware of and that's the problem, you know,
Speaker 1: because they could be judged on something that they themselves
Speaker 1: had no knowledge of going into, you know, a job interview. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also found an article by a Manachum Wecker about
Speaker 1: a professor at Florida State University who was using cloud
Speaker 1: to grade his students in class. Now it was for
Speaker 1: a marketing class. It was, you know, for an electronic
Speaker 1: marketing class. So people were upset about it. But it
Speaker 1: kind of makes me think, well, if this is specifically
Speaker 1: a metric for measuring your ability to market yourself in
Speaker 1: electronic media, maybe clouds. I don't know that I would
Speaker 1: make it the soul thing that you grade someone on,
Speaker 1: but it probably at least belongs in part of it.
Speaker 1: Um or should build an aware that the clash should
Speaker 1: build an awareness of its prominence in in today's society
Speaker 1: for that. But I wanted to mention to one thing
Speaker 1: that where it doesn't compare to a credit score, however,
Speaker 1: is there are more than one agency developing credit scores
Speaker 1: in the United States. Cloud is not alone, but it
Speaker 1: is an unusual prominence and it's a cloud, it turns out,
Speaker 1: you might say that. So, yeah, it's if we If
Speaker 1: we assume that the cloud algorithm is looking at things
Speaker 1: in a very methodical and measured way, and that it is,
Speaker 1: in the end of the day, looking at the how
Speaker 1: how influential people are based upon how widely their message
Speaker 1: has heard and how many people are writing about that person,
Speaker 1: then cloud and of itself is an interesting and I
Speaker 1: think valuable service for people who are trying to get
Speaker 1: a message out. It's it's not it's not necessarily a
Speaker 1: good thing or a bad thing. It's a useful tool. Um.
Speaker 1: The way other people are using this tool might be,
Speaker 1: you know, might make you upset or it might throw
Speaker 1: you depending on your cloud score. Um, but that's you
Speaker 1: know again, you can't blame the tool for the way
Speaker 1: people are using it, right. I mean the same thing
Speaker 1: we could say about Twitter. Twitter. When it was launched,
Speaker 1: people were talking about Twitter being a way that you
Speaker 1: would send out a message to a group of friends. Right.
Speaker 1: That was the main use case of Twitter. That is
Speaker 1: totally changed since Twitter launched. And one of these days
Speaker 1: we are going to do an episode or at least
Speaker 1: at least one episode about the Twitter will probably a
Speaker 1: two parter, but the story of Twitter, to really talk
Speaker 1: about the foundation of it, what it was originally meant for,
Speaker 1: and what it has turned into, especially in light of
Speaker 1: the controversy of how Twitter has handled the whole API
Speaker 1: approach and third party developers, because that's definitely caused a
Speaker 1: lot of frustration in the tech world. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: I've got companies like Cloud that are very much leveraging
Speaker 1: Twitter to get, you know, to to become a valuable service. So, um,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, does cloud really matter?
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on the industry you're in. And Uh,
Speaker 1: the nice thing about the Cloud score is it's not static.
Speaker 1: It will change over time, and if you are dedicated
Speaker 1: to increasing that Cloud score, you can do it in
Speaker 1: legitimate ways. Hopefully, the cloud algorithm will be able to
Speaker 1: take into account things like dummy Twitter accounts or dummy
Speaker 1: Facebook accounts, so that if you were to get a
Speaker 1: huge number of followers immediately, it would not automatically adjust
Speaker 1: your score because obviously you could gain that system. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are companies out there already that only exists to
Speaker 1: provide people fake essentially fake accounts. Uh. There are even
Speaker 1: other ones that will try and get real accounts to
Speaker 1: follow you. There's this whole um, I scratch your back,
Speaker 1: you scratch mine approach where you like, if you follow
Speaker 1: these twenty people, these twenty people will follow you back.
Speaker 1: You know. That's kind of you know, almost like a
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme of Twitter followers. I would hope that the
Speaker 1: cloud algorithm takes that into account and again really concentrates
Speaker 1: more on the impact and hopefully avoids counting false positives.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up this classic episode about cloud. The
Speaker 1: cloud went belly up. Originally it started to kind of
Speaker 1: get away from the whole scoring system, and then eventually
Speaker 1: it went away entirely. It was an interesting idea, but
Speaker 1: one that was almost guaranteed to go sour pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: If we ever assigned scores for anything, people will start
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to game the system, because
Speaker 1: of course, getting a high score means winning well. If
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: send me an email the addresses tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or pop on over to tech
Speaker 1: stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find archive of all
Speaker 1: of our past shows. There. You will also find links
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Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Y Text Stuff
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