We’ve been talking up our upcoming beta for the last month or so and that can get old fast…so it’s time to at least start getting things out there. We had a successful period of internal or ‘alpha’ testing (friends & family), so last week we started a private beta to get a broader universe of folks banging on the site.

While we’re planning lots of surveys around multiple domains in the near term, we’re initially providing a personality survey and a music preferences survey. If you’re familiar with us, you’ll know we’re taking a somewhat different approach from some of the other survey/discovery type sites out there.

First, we’re providing a much greater level of detail that you’re likely used to seeing. Your individual personality is assessed on 45 distinct personality traits (based on Big Five Personality Theory) and your music preferences on 14 underlying music attributes (based on our proprietary FUSES(SM) model). You can see your results at that level, or at a less granular level, in the form of what we call a badge. Here’s mine for personality.

What we think is even more interesting is the social angle. We’re not looking to build a social network (think we’d all agree there are enough of those around!) but to leverage your existing “social graph” or your connections you’ve already established on sites like Facebook. With Signal Patterns, after you’ve reviewed your own results, you can then compare and contrast yourself to others - like your Facebook friends - and discover others with similar personalities or preferences: “People Like You.” Here’re some people with similar music preferences to, and how they’re different from, our CTO Giri.

We’re just scratching the surface in this post of what you can do on the site but hopefully this piques your interest enough to check it out. To join our private beta, follow this link and you can register. And most importantly, let us know what you think. Watch this space for more updates and/or check out (and join!) our Facebook page.

My two previous posts described Gladwell’s influencers, and posited that while family members make a big impact on our purchasing decisions, it was still worth our while to find these influencers. As for Duncan Watts’ theory—that some people have a disproportionate impact, but that it’s impossible to identify those people in advance—well, that’s a radical and fascinating perspective.

Gladwell’s position (as reported here) that we’re a young field, and we’re explaining small pieces of the variability in influence, is exceptionally similar to the thoughts that I expressed in my earlier blog post. Watts’ simulations are interesting, but none of them caused people to actually act, by purchasing something or going to a movie or voting for a candidate. Perhaps it takes a real-world influencer to make someone act on a preference—to bridge the gap between attitude and behavior. Connectors, Salesmen and Mavens are all action-oriented beings: their power comes not in their attitudes, but in their abilities to turn their attitudes into action, whether that action is social connection, market mastery, or persuasion.

In summary, influencers may not play the role that marketers have expected them to play, but they’re still worth finding. Even if Watts is correct—if social phenomena spread more randomly than anything—we’re still not wasting our time, as these people can still help spread trends once people are willing to accept them, and might also be able to guide general trends towards specific products or services. If he’s wrong, and influencers are still the kindling for wildfire-like spreads of information or action, then we don’t have to stop searching for them merely because many of them celebrate holidays with us.

(note: the image here is a representation of 30,000 random numbers from an interesting post on codinghorror.com)

In my previous post, I identified three types of influencers that Malcom Gladwell discussed in The Tipping Point: Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen. Finding these alleged influencers has been the subject of many snake-oil salesmen and marketing companies since Gladwell’s book came out. Now, Pollara’s study has corroborated what some marketers have feared all along: that influencers aren’t necessary to reach millions of people, and that other factors, such as family suggestion and randomness, actually have far more of an impact on the propagation of trends.

These approaches are not necessarily irreconcilable. There is great variability in how we treat the opinions of family and friends. If I were interested in the best poker website, I’d ask Justin, who can tell me about the competition, the rake, and the interface of any site out there. He’s a Maven when it comes to online poker, and he’s also a friend that I trust—the latter doesn’t disqualify him from being the former. Another Maven might have a popular poker blog, but I wouldn’t trust it if I wanted the best information. So pitting “friends and family” against “Mavens or popular sources of information” sets up a false dichotomy. Pliny the Younger (pictured) was sought out by family members and strangers alike, but among his family members, he had a large influence.

Connectors, too, can be found among friends and family—in fact, if anyone’s likely to be counted among friends, it’s a connector. Finding that friends and family are more influential in purchasing decisions still doesn’t help delineate which friends and family have the most impact. Since I’d rather get advice from someone in my social network, I’d go to the Connector in my network if no one in my immediate circle could be trusted as an expert.

The same line of reasoning applies to salesmen, although the process would be less of a conscious one. Who are we persuaded by among our family members? The outgoing, enthusiastic ones who love what they do—Gladwell’s salesmen.

To sum up, it may be important to find Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen because they spread influence among their social groups, not because they have massive clout in the flat, online world of social networks. They have friends and families too, and may impact those groups accordingly. The influence that people have may vary in both quantity and quality, and both of those facets are important; imposing distinctions between friends and family as compared to wide, non-personal influences manages to ignore distinctions between the two facets. It’s certainly possible that online “influencers” have a greater quantity of influence (in the sheer number of people that they reach), but family members will have influence that’s of a higher quality—and more likely to influence behavior. It is still the influencers among that group, however, that may have the biggest impact.

Gavin O’Malley recently wrote about a study that found that people were more likely to try a product that was recommended by friends and family than they were to buy a product recommended by a well-known blogger. His conclusion is that “so-called ‘influencers’ might have less clout than some marketers think.” The authors of the study, the Pollara research firm, reach a similar conclusion, “Marketers might have to reconsider who the real influencers are out there,” according to the article. This flies in the face of over 50 years of thought on the issue. But if friends and family are most influential, should marketers give up on finding social influencers? I’ll explore this issue in a series of posts.

Before we get to the issue of how important these influencers are, let’s think about who they are thought to be. In Malcom Gladwell’s 2002 book The Tipping Point, he writes about Mavens, Salesmen, and Connectors, each of whom plays a role in spreading social phenomena and critical information.  Mavens collect information about the marketplace, often to the point of obsession. They remember specifics, down to specific prices. They also want to share the information with others, and to help others find good deals—helping is one of their primary objectives. They continually teach and learn, but don’t try to persuade.  Connectors are interested in connecting others—they are primarily responsible for introducing people to other people. They are action-oriented: They don’t sit around and think about things, but rather they do things. They are curious, self-confident, sociable, and energetic.  Salesmen are persuaders. Their enthusiasm allows others to trust them. They are energetic, likable, optimistic, and emotionally expressive. They love being the center of attention.

These people sound as if they might have a big impact when it comes to the spread of social phenomena, but O’Malley and Pollara seem to think that you’re more likely to seek advice from your loved ones than you are to seek it from experts, social butterflies, or persuaders. In my next post, I’ll discuss whether “so-called influencers” are still worth targeting.

The web started as the software equivalent of a library. At first, it was only you and the books. You could “browse” different pages of different books, look at the pictures on the pages, and read on. As the initial years went by you started noticing that there are other people in the library as well. They were sitting and reading - like you, but it was hard to know more about them. A bunch of faceless mannequins or crash-test-dummies…

We all know what happened next: the library started carrying videos, CDs and all sorts of other stuff - all for the browsing pleasure of the visitors. Then, visitors were allowed do donate their own stuff if they wanted. Image sharing, video sharing, blogs, and social networks. The mannequins got a face, clothes, and their chance of writing a book about themselves and publishing it in the library!

Use this analogy and you understand why most people use MySpace and Facebook to stay in touch with people they already know and rarely meet new people. Reading books and watching videos is fun, reading other people’s books and watching their videos is more fun. And - leaving them a note at the end of the book is even more fun. But it’s still not really social. There’s no party going on at the library yet.

So what’s missing? We call it “social fabric.” It’s the thing that gets a party going, the vast flow of information that people pick up instantly about other people. When you walk in to a real party you see people move, interact, respond to their environment (the music in the room), and choose their spot (standing next to the punch bowl). You can immediately tell who’s a geek, a party animal, a sports fan, or a metal head. And more importantly - you know who is like you and who reminds you of people you know.

And while it could be pretty darn difficult to get a party with 100 people going, getting it going with 100 million people is much harder. This is what Signal Patterns is trying to do.

Party on