As a follow-up to my earlier ‘Futurecasting Social Search’ presentation at the 2008 Search Insider Summit; in Summer 2009 I wrote an article for the Organic blog ‘ThreeMinds’ titled ‘Docs are Old School, Why We Need PageRank for People’.

The central idea was that Google’s PageRank algorithm was becoming obsolete by continuing to assign reputation to web documents/URLs at a time when the web is moving to syndication and distributed content.  The article also outlined a novel solution to the problem by assigning reputation to content authors via a system integrating Social Graph data, OpenID, and existing search ranking strategies.

Following publication I launched a campaign promoting the article through a variety of social media channels – the following case study documents results and learnings from this campaign.

The Results
The promotion campaign for the ‘PageRank for People’ article was a success. Shortly after publication on ThreeMinds the article went viral on Twitter, spreading rapidly through the search and technology communities. The article was commented and retweeted by several tech luminaries including:

• Dave Winer – Creator of RSS

• Tim O’Reilly – Founder of O’Reilly Media & originator of term “Web 2.0”

• John Battelle – Author of the book “The Search”

• Leo Laporte – Founder of TWiT.tv Network & popular tech commentator

Analysis of traffic patterns showed a clear pattern of trickle-down content distribution/syndication originating from each of these Twitter Influencers.

ThreeMinds  is one of the most highly visited blogs in the advertising agency world. Despite an already large volume of baseline traffic, the ‘PageRank for People’ article generated a huge boost in traffic to the ThreeMinds site, increasing total site traffic by more than 60% during one two-week period. The graph below shows total traffic to ThreeMinds for the last year with the two spikes on the right illustrating PRP traffic. Additional reports show the article was the #1 viewed article for the last year and one of the most popular posts ever published on ThreeMinds.

Traffic sources for the article were unusual as nearly all of the traffic for the post came direct from Social Media (85%+). ThreeMinds posts typically get a fairly even distribution between Direct, Referral, Search, & Social Media sources.

Learnings
In preparation for promoting the article, I talked with several top Twitter and Social Media experts to learn how to best increase the chances of having my post picked up.

Project Apollo aims to provide “a day in the life” of an average media user.

” Here’s an example of what Project Apollo might capture and aggregate in “a day in the life” of a health conscious, Visa- and MasterCard-toting married woman, age 41, with a 13-year-old daughter who lives a hectic life, eats out four to six times a week and places a premium on convenience. Our Mom hears a drive-time radio commercial for McDonald’s in the morning and swings by for a late lunch with her daughter the same day.

While watching television with the family that evening, a commercial for the Navigator airs, prompting a weekend visit to the Lincoln showroom by our couple the following Saturday. With Apollo, the connection from exposure to action will be clear, direct and measurable, informed by a robust collection of rich consumer profiles contributed by panel members.”

Note that all of the media sources listed are broadcast sources. Collecting accurate data from this many distinct broadcast sources is next to impossible using current technology. How do you track in-car radio use? What about the TV ad that was playing in the doctor’s waiting room? These sources don’t lend themselves to the click-path tracking that’s so effective on the web.

To get around this Arbitron has developed a new piece of audio-tracking hardware that they’re calling the “Portable People Meter“. A PPM is provided every person subscribed to Project Apollo, and functions much in the same way Nielsen set-top boxes have been used for decades to track TV usage. The PPM however is a small pager-sized device that users take with them and it tracks media use by recording special non-audible signals inserted into broadcasts.

“The passive device automatically records the wearer’s exposure to any medium that has inserted an inaudible code into its audio programming using an Arbitron PPM encoder. When a unique, inaudible code is detected, the PPM registers, records and time-stamps the signal. At day’s end, the media history is downloaded by a docking station that simultaneously recharges the PPM unit.

Portability ensures that all exposures register, from conventional broadcast media to in-store vehicles, from entertainment venues to streaming media, from video games to the Internet.”

From a techie standpoint I’m fascinated with the amount of data Project Apollo will provide to marketers and being involved in several podcast/videocast productions I’m excited about the ROI level tracking Apollo will bring to this type of media. As a privacy conscious media user however, the Big Brother connotations of a nearly omniscient consumer tracking program is pretty worrying and I can’t help wondering how long it will be before profiling technology like this is put to other more nefarious uses.

Initial tests of Project Apollo have already been completed and Arbitron and Nielsen will announce whether or not they will pursue full commercial development sometime in mid 2007.