Three years ago, I was sitting together with a colleague in a coffee shop. It was snowing. We were watching the snowflakes falling down. We were talking some philosophy on how the future of individuality will look like ten years ahead, refering to the snow flakes and how their "individual dna" changes the world around us into a new one we have never seen before.
Sure, we were not sure what the future will bring. However, that day we were realizing some critical development that people define themselves through blog posts (like our fathers did with books), reviews (Amazon and the likes), ratings (in communities and networks, not only social ones...), and comments on articles and posts on websites all over the world. We saw that CV's might loose their relevance for job search as there was an option to recommend a person's capabillities and intelligence just by checking their digital engagement, output - their digital DNA. The feeling that humanity and ethic values will have a massive effect on how people might be defined from the outside world was obvious to us. Just like "perfect" snow flakes have somehow perfect formats than others. They have scored and thus indexed themselves as superior to the others.
Today, I know, see and read that scoring and indexing becomes a crucial part of our lives, our individuality, and our identity. Although it might just affect those who are really active social web users... for now. Still, the trend is alive. Platforms are tracking our digital footprints, our shopping behaviour like Blippy, our deepest desires, and try to predict our future purchase decision. The question is not whether we will continue to score value to our index, and/or if others will follow. It is more like... Will social pofiles, writing status updates, and sharing brain value enhance our individuality, and thus how will this influence our credibility? And who or which organization or association will be judging upon it? Or even more important, who will secure the validity of such an index process?
Just imagine we had some kind of trusted source or association that knows our scoring index on the personal likelihood of sharing some piece of information, the potential of reach and relevance? Ideas, news, rumors, and visions around brands, products and services would be addressed to that person via a newly-created trust agency. Agencies and brands would be much more interested in the long-tail ad market, in bloggers or in social medians in general. Artifical user reach would be shifting to real personal relevance. Brand intensity could be enlarged by user credibility. If the users voluntarily share their believe in brands, products and companies. But is this realistic? It must be, or how could Facebook pages have become so important for some of us? We love to score, define and index ourselves via the social web. And personal search engines like 123people or yasni are just two examples of possible scoring index platforms that undermine our aasumptions.
Obviously the social web will be changing into a pervasive web which people need to be aware of (and understand). Semantic impact needs to evolve, become a trustworty basis for credible metric which people could rely upon. And how does the amout of time invested in web engagement pay into the credit of our professional individuality? Is less more, or more less? How will Google change it's algorithm and thereby the impact on our personal scoring index? Should we invest in Facebook, Diaspora or on Paths (which by its definition may become the real base for our personal brandvangelism). And just think about the possibilities if you can match the personal index in a room via mobile and augmented reality tools? There will be no way around a personal web manager controling, checking and optimizing your personal branding in the future. Don't you think?
"Like Larry Page and Sergey Brin changed the way websites are measured with their Pagerank, reputation scores will change the way people will be treated in the future. Reputation scores will change the classical customer relationship management as it was done bei companies in the past and will enable them to identify opinion leaders within their customers and attract them with special offers and treatment in order to use them as evangelists for their products. Knowing who the most valuable peers are provides marketing experts a complete new angle of doing campaigns - offline and online," says Marcel Hollerbach, CEO of SiRANK (...a company that is working on a business model on indexing people's reputation).
I am just waiting that there will be a platform that aggregates all the data that we leave as score data on the web, and that this platform then indexes us. Or is that a threat? Already becoming reality when we look at Klout, the first personal scoring index? Or is it just an assessment of social media influence?
Today, the snow flakes keep falling down.... Many of us have built an intense relationship on the basis of sharing and matching our most inner brain credentials. We work on our personal scoring index and hope whenever we need to differentiate ourselves from others, our social graph can enrich our digital identity.
Do you still wonder if and in which way some format of Personal Scoring Index (PSI) could become alive...?
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Credits: Peter Kirchhoff / Pixelio.de