Abstract

The digital realm increasingly recognizes the relevance of “opinion leaders” or influential users: those who, through their online activity (publishing tweets and blog posts, updating social networks status, recommending readings, etc.) create or filter content to people over whom they exert personal influence. Hence the proliferation of tools that assess the influence of a person or brand by monitoring use of social media. The article discusses the two most important tools: Klout and PeerIndex, explaining the parameters that form the basis of their measurement algorithms as well as the deficiencies of these models of analysis. Understanding how digital influence is exercised and how to measure it is one of the most interesting questions of the “2.0” phenomenon.