November 13, 2009

Is TweetLevel the new Flim-Flam-A-Scope?

I was recently thinking about the Flim-Flam-A-Scope. Not familiar with the FFAS? That's understandable, it’s a term that my old boss Rich coined to describe a product we were producing a video for. It was a device that, through the use of ultraviolet light and mirrors, allowed people to see every wrinkle, sunspot, freckle and pockmark. This sounds like a medical device, right? Well it wasn’t. It was used in skin care salons to encourage customers to buy deep cleansing facials and other premium treatments. Of course those treatments didn’t fix any skin conditions. The Flim-Flam-A-Scope's sole purpose was to surprise or shock people. Then soften their resistance to unnecessary (yet soothing) spa sessions.

Recently Edelman released a new social media tool called Tweet Level. I won’t go so far as to call it a next generation flim-flam-a-scope, but it does have some remarkable similarities. Like the original FFAS, it reveals something generally invisible, In this case a ranking of twitter users. They do this by analyzing influence, popularity,engagement and trust to produce a numerical value to define a score. So far so good, those may not have been the exact factors I would have chosen but they are certainly a fair set of variables to work with. The problem is that the system produces results that are questionable. When an entertainment blogger who paints semen on the mouths of celebrities, Demi Moore’s boy toy and the most trusted name in news are all in the top five, I think something is seriously askew. It looks random or at least less than rigorous. I assume that Edelman was expecting (hoping for) debate on the products and its results. The more conversation, the better.

OK, so where’s the flim-flam? If the FFAS was designed to convince you that your skin was a mess so that you would voluntarily pay money for a useless facial, TweetLevel’s goal is to get people to turn over information to Edelman so they can build a database that allows them to better target their outreach efforts. In exchange for a mostly meaningless score, users provide information about their jobs and industry focus. Is that a fair exchange? That’s hard to say. People pay for palm readings. Companies spend money on Myer’s-Briggs and other pseudo psychological employee evaluations. So where’s the harm? I think when asking people for information there should be disclosure about how that information may be used. It doesn’t matter if that information is being used to derive a more accurate score or if it will be used to help micro-target a future social media campaign. By not disclosing that information Edelman negates one of its ranking measures, trust. And, that’s not something easily regained.

Here’s my Tweet Level Score. Not that really means anything.