Genaro a partagé hier un article assez extraordinaire, rédigé par Paul Adams (à rajouter dans vos lecteurs RSS sur le champ). Celui-ci met à jour l’immense talon d’Achille des outils de mesure d’influence en ligne (Klout et tout autre instrument bâtard), et leur incapacité à dévoiler les tenants et les aboutissants réels et tangibles de la réputation, On et Off, d’un individu.

La réputation online est une partie visible d’un iceberg bien plus grand que ce qu’on peut percevoir. Je connais bien des gens qui ont des scores hallucinants sur Klout et compagnie, mais qui, dans la vie se révèlent être de véritables truffes au niveau boulot ou vie sociale.

Offline we all know who to turn to ask advice on specific things. Specific people we work with now and people we’ve worked with in the past. Yet when thinking about turning to people online who we may not have worked with before, it’s nowhere near as straightforward. In fact, some of the best people I’ve worked with, the people whose opinions I most highly respect, have really low online reputation scores – as measured by emerging services such as Klout and PeerIndex.

These services are tackling an immensely challenging problem, credit to them. But this is a human problem, not a technology problem, and I’m not sure that measuring what people are saying publicly (or semi-publicly) and how others are responding is the right approach.

In my experience there is little correlation between people who are public, or people who are loud, and people who are knowledgeable. There are some very knowledgeable people who are public and loud. I follow them. I read their stuff. But there are a far greater number of people who are equally (and often more) knowledgeable, but simply prefer not to engage in public discourse. These are the people that matter.

Often, social media tools afford a lack of critical thinking. See something, half read it, tweet and reweet it. It’s easier than crafting a thoughtful response. We’re all guilty. The problem is that it amplifies the connected group, without much analysis of the quality of the content.

Through the lens of our online measurement tools the author looks knowledgeable, the content looks good, and the retweeters look influential. But none of those may be true.

Being part of a clique community on Twitter does not make someone knowledgeable.

Paul Adams – Think Outside In

À titre d’exemple, inversement, depuis que j’ai commencé à travailler de façon stable, j’ai réalisé que les gens les plus brillants et les plus efficaces étaient généralement les plus discrets. Ils sont présents, mais ils se moquent bien de votre avis, de vos états d’âme, du fait que vous ayez de l’audience, de l’influence ou quoi que ce soit. Donc, leur score de réputation est faible.

Bizarrement, l’influence de ces personnes là est bien plus précieuse et tangible à mes yeux.

Peut-être parce qu’ils ont vraiment de l’influence sur moi.