Open source standards for measuring social media

One random idea I did have and share last night that may have legs was this: an open source set of agreed measurements for social media.

Proof that it may not be a crap idea 

So in the licensing of intellectual property we have the fantastic Creative Commons, god bless their wonderful iconified souls.

These are a set of alternatives to (C) copyright 'all rights reserved' that offer anyone, at no cost, the benefit of more nuanced licenses that reflect the desire to share and remix content in this world of online self-expression and uzergeneratedcaaaantent.

Creative Commons are:

• well-recognised
• agreed on
• global
• helpful to everyone that uses them
• robust
• open

So why can't we work towards the same for measuring social media?

The problems we have in measuring social media is that the current ways of measuring are:

• not well recognised (not the 'how we measure' but the 'what to measure'
• not agreed on (it seems each provider has their way)
• global?
• not helpful to everyone that uses them (this is what I've heard from clients)
• aren't robust - there are substantial question marks over methods and proof (this is what I've heard from researchy people)
• are closed and proprietary

My vision is this:

• That marketers and agencies in different countries, industries and organisations are reporting common metrics for their social media activities
• That these common metrics underpin all of our work in online social media, which enables and underpins sales and market growth, and makes us as an industry extra-downturn-resistant
• That the common standards are open source - being free to use, free to adapt, and that they somehow therefore evolve and stay fresh, current and useful
• That this is somehow as decentralised as it can be - we don't seek to control, we seek to signpost and welcome and embrace (e.g. we probably don't need a new conversational index - we just need everyone to know about it, care about it and use it if it's relevant to their need)
• That these are sensitive to the fact that this is all human, and conversational and so on - we are only looking for useful measurements where possible, we know that it's a mucky topic to some
• That they are generally simple
• That this is self-sustaining

It seems that Giles from Magpie is up for getting on board with something, and that at least one of his frenemies/industry rivals is too (I'll wait to talk with them before breaking their name). And from the interested party side of things (which is also where I'm sat - I care, but it's not my core business) Jenny Bee is suggesting a hack day or some kind of collaborative 'we all sit down and get this worked out' time together. I reckon that will be a cool way to make this all REAL.

I'm not going to throw time at this if it's a complete non-starter, but if I feel I can get a core of support, I'd be delighted to get some momentum and really create something of worth for our community.

The big question? Could we hope to get the 800 pound gorillas of the measurement game behind it? Early signs from last night are certainly: initially, no. But never say never.

If you consider yourself interested in getting involved with this as a project, and would like to discuss further, please comment or email - I'm testing the water and we'll go from there. If it's not a go-er, I guess we can all crack on with the day jobs eh? NICE.

Comments

[Will McInnes]

PS.If you think this is half-baked at present, you're right - it is. But please take a positive viewpoint if you can, and help me make it better...

[tim hoang]

Excellent initiative Will. Count me in. Though i remember Alex last night mentioning that Nelison spent $50 million on measuring it. Dunno about you but i'm a bit skint this week.

[Sam Michel]

Inneresting idea, Will. A hack-day/unconference/pub-meet to get into the specifics might be useful.

Even better if one of the giant measurers would stump up for a few refreshments ;-)

As the metrics companies are each pushing their own methodologies for this area, it'd probably have to focus on a high-level framework.

From the discussion on the night and the subsequent comments on blogs, seems to me that input from the psychology side of things is vital in effectively framing how this is tackled.

It is social, after all!

[Will McInnes]

Sam - we could focus on a high level framework to get round the 'own methodologies' point. ORRRrrrrrrr - we could focus on the outcomes, as this seemed to resonate with people, and how the provider/measurers got to the outcomes/metrics is up to them, so we don't interfere with their IP, we help them and their clients crystallise the 'what' and they can worry about the 'how'?

[Jonathan Hopkins]

DItto me. Great idea. Let's do it. keep me posted. Maybe you could hook in Lloyd Davis and it could be one of the 'projects' of the social media club to help drive. Let me know what I can do and keep me posted.

[Will McInnes]

wicked, thanks Jon.

[Sam Michel]

Sounds like a good plan to me. Gonna be a lot trickier than yer standard IAB measurements, I'm guessing.

Sure to get the old grey matter moving though. Bring it on.

[Dominic Campbell]

Great stuff Will - a very worthwhile enterprise and one I'd love to be part of. I'd suggest hooking in James ‘the Governor’ of Redmonk too as he just loves these challenges to get his grey matter going!

[roger]

good call will. needed.

i'd be happy to bang heads together. question: do you see big measurement firms (nielsen et al) to be friend or foe? if friend, i can probably help a lot. if foe, i can very much understand!

to my mind, in some shape or form, you'd need support - to create a standard/kitemark to validate the output with big clients.

[BadgerGravling]

Count me in from a client point of view.

The biggest problem with selecting measurement tools and encouraging adoption across a business is that it almost requires using every single option to be able to come up with some yardstick to judge anything with.

The more everyone involved can agree on the simple baseline, reasoning and research, the easier it will be for anyone seeking to adopt and implement these measurements, and convince colleagues and managers that it is a worthwhile investment.

[Tom Nixon]

Love the idea of there being some agreed standards for measuring social media. I think this would be a great step towards the social media industry growing up.

I could be misunderstanding the approach you're suggesting, but I'm not sure how open source standards would work in practice, because the standards would never be 'finished', so at what point should the analytics vendors take the current standard and spend $$$ and months implementing tools based on them, only for the standard to change?

Perhaps an open source / wiki approach could be used by any interested parties to thrash out version 1 of a standard, then after that, some kind of consortium, a la W3C could maintain it in an orderly fashion to give them all a chance to actually implement it?

That said, I have a natural aversion to a committee running anything - I know that the W3C has more than its fair share of politics and hassles.

[Tom Nixon]

Could be answering my own question here: Perhaps the community that appears around the standards could vote on a 'cut off point' when the current version of the standard is given a version number, and everyone goes away and implements it. Then the standard continues to evolve, but nobody implements it until the next cut-off point. Is this what you meant?

[Ed]

Count me in if you're up to something; a subject really close to my heart, and a couple of projects I'm working on are wrestling with this at the mo...

[Chris]

I'm intrigued by the whole idea. Keep me in the loop of any meets surrounding this idea and I'll do my best to attend and contribute.

[Tish]

Very interesting stuff here.I am keen to find out any developments in the psychological aspects of social media and measurement of this.

Maybe this for me is more about how people feel from a counselling perspective and what then, as far as business is concerned, gets them motivated.

You could seek out Carl Rogers theories on groups and education and anything on Rollnick and Miller's Motivational Interviewing.