The Sunday Times Social List

  • PR

Sunday Times Social List 2The Sunday Times has joined the social influence ranking party with “The Sunday Times Social List”.

The paper is aiming to use its considerable clout in the list-building world  – which includes the likes of the Sunday Times Rich List, The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For and The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 – to muscle in on online territory which is hot right now.

Time will tell whether it will be as authoritative as the likes of Klout (“The Standard for Influence”) and Peerindex (“Understand your online social capital”) which are already well-established in this sector.

Sunday Times Social List videoOn the home page of The Sunday Times Social List, there’s an of-the-moment video (slick production,zoom-in-zoom-out graphics, funky tables, word clouds, etc) voiced by Richard Bacon which shows how the tool works.

It appears to use a similar ranking algorithm to its competitors which measure data from your social networks.  The Sunday Times Social List currently allows you to connect your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts.

By comparison, my Peerindex profile allows me to connect my Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora accounts, plus a Blog.

The one area that has seen Peerindex gather such momentum in the last few months is the ability to curate your own lists, such as this list of Top PR Agencies in the UK; it will be interesting to see if The Sunday Times Social List adds this functionality

Sunday Times Social ListThis might be just a short-term stunt to either a) publicise The Sunday Times Rich List, whose logo appears througout or b) engender positive sentiment  ie encouraging social media types to talk about, and interact with, The Sunday Times brand.

Or it may become a serious contender to social media influence measurement.  It’s certainly a tool to keep your eye on.