Why do we need so many social media scoreboards?

If social media is all about conversation, why is so much of it devoted to keeping score?

Social networks like MySpace are polluted with people scrambling to have the most “friends.” Bloggers are obsessed with their online rankings. Twitter users zealously track their “followers.” Even boring old LinkedIn prods you along with a seemingly arbitrary percentage score.

I’m not so naïve that I don’t understand what’s going on. Humans are competitive, and some people go through life feeling that something only matters if someone’s keeping score.

But I also can’t let the hypocrisy of “social media gurus” go unchecked. We talk about the big-picture beauty of new media as a place where everyone can connect on a level playing field. But then there’s that drive to be first, best, most. And this siren call of punditry can seduce even the most committed conversationalists.

While greed and pride are definitely parts of the equation, I think there’s a lot more to this trend of social scorekeeping. After the jump, I’ll share a few of my own ideas — some of which are even optimistic.

A few theories on why there's so much scorekeeping in social media:

• Because self-promotion is a greasy engine that undeniably drives the social Web.

There are examples of brilliant sites or people that have soared to success just through mass appeal, but these are rare exceptions. Behind almost every successful Web site or personality is someone who’s devoted a lot of time to building an audience.

You set benchmarks for your traffic, your subscribers, your connections, etc., and you celebrate each new level of achievement. Just like any other business.

• Because it brings order to the chaos.

Rankings can sometimes be a helpful stamp of legitimacy. This is something you notice when you first join Twitter, a site built around the idea of listening to strangers talk and occasionally jumping into the fray. How do you decide whom to follow? One easy way is to go with the most popular users, since you know they’ll give you a basic understanding of how the service works.

In this case, it’s nice to see who has the most followers, so you know you’ll at least be in good company. (Of course, the irony is that these Twitter “celebrities” are the least likely to actually talk to you, which defies the whole point of the site. But them’s the breaks.)

• Because it can motivate you to use the Web better.

Increasing your score — whether it’s your followers on Twitter or your percentage on LinkedIn — requires a good understanding of what you’re doing.

Just like any endeavor, you plateau out after some initial success. Maybe that’s fine with you, or maybe you’re the kind of person who’s going to look for new ways to keep advancing. What could you be doing that’s more interesting or more visible?

Without any way of keeping score, we’d never know if we were improving — or if we needed to be.

• Because it gives us something to talk about.

If you use Plurk, a microblogging site that competes with Twitter, you’re constantly rated by a system called Plurk Karma.  As your score increases, more features are made available to you.

I’ll be graphically honest. I think that’s horseshit. That said, I’m a bit intrigued by the complex formula that determines your karma. Because the site wants to discourage “power users” who only want a huge audience, you can lose karma points by getting overzealous with your friending.

In the end, the karma ranking itself has become a major point of discussion. Instead of simply bragging about their score, Plurk users are in a constant dance with the number, trying to figure out why it seems to randomly praise and punish them like a fickle divinity.

Add this to the countless other discussions about the Web’s popularity contests, and you’ll see that the ultimate role of scorekeeping might just be for people like me to sit around debating it.

UPDATE: In one of those "great minds" moments, Gary Moneysmith also wrote a blog entry today called, "Why does social media need karma ratings?" Check it out for a much more thorough look at the pros and cons of karma systems like Plurk's.

Comments

[Alan Wolk]

Nice analysis.

In the end, the ones who are honest about what they're doing are the ones who look the least foolish doing it. (To my eyes, anyway.)

The ones who constantly pretend to be shocked that anyone is listening to them baffle me. I mean we don't buy it for a minute and it just makes them look slimy. Of course you're looking for more followers or a higher ranking or whatever.

Though the actual physics of following several thousand people on Twitter or Facebook is sort of lost on me.

[Yaybia]

Not sure if this was the intention for MySpace and other 'older' social media platforms, but by rating/ranking/tracking the activity of users on new sites, it will be much easier to give advertisers/developers information about which users and pages are most valuable. If you're tracking a brand through social media and a person with 8478947 points and another with 7 points are both spreading bad vibes -- who are you going to address first? Just an idea..

[Bloggeries]

I enjoyed this and several other of your bloggeries. I found it when I looked in the trackbacks for Plurkable. Thanks for linking to that piece I wrote about Unveiling new Karma. Just wrote another piece how it's turning off casual users.

All the best,

[GeekMommy]

Wow. I hadn't really thought of it from that perspective.
I suppose because I function a bit differently. For me - the number of people following me is also an indicator of the number of people I'm following... and I try to use that number to balance whether or not I'm actually interacting effectively. Then again, I could never function at the numbers some of the 'big players' do - because for me that turns more into an audience and less into a conversation group.
But I'm not using it from a business perspective - but a personal one. That would also change how I perceive it.

But when it comes to other 'rankings' on socnets, I'm truly uninterested. When people ask me how many people I'm connected to on FaceBook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, etc - I can honestly say that I don't have any idea, I'd have to go look it up - but it's not high numbers - in the dozens, not the hundreds or thousands.

But the 'karma' thing - that's a different ball of wax. Mine went high initially - and then dropped back down to low numbers when I didn't use Plurk obsessively. What that meant was that I lost ability to use site functionality. It actually had a negative effect on my desire to be on the site. I don't want my socnet to police my usage.

Brilliant article btw. :) Thanks for opening my eyes to that perspective.