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