"Geoff, Social influence scoring is a real bug bear of mine and I maintain that an external agency is not capable of accurately measuring it due to only having public data. The data host would be in the best position (be it Google, Twitter, FB etc.) as they can monitor both private and public activity as well as accurately measure additional factors like click-throughs to help determine who is driving traffic rather than "soft influence" of just likes and +1s. I wrote a proposal/essay a while back called the 3 R's of Influence which states that influence is a composite of reach, reputation and relevance. The current activity model is ridiculous and does not give any true indication. Relevance is a big issue, as you state, and I defined it as trust + interest + location + platform. Timing is obviously a major factor. Identity and context also plays a part. Who are we and why are we influential? Currently we are graded the same regardless of whether we are a content creator or curator -..." - Colin Walker