Introducing SocialRank
Here we go. It is long so tl;dr is on bottom.
For the past six weeks, Michael and I have been working day and night on our new company, Modern Mast. Today we are happy to announce the launch of our product, SocialRank.
Housekeeping:
Try the tool at: SocialRank.co
Follow us on Twitter: @SocialRank
What is SocialRank?
SocialRank tells you more about your followers on Twitter. Not WHAT they talk about, but WHO they are. SocialRank is an evolution of the MVF (Most Valuable Follower). Before diving into the who, what, where and how of SocialRank, I’d like to tell the original MVF backstory.
MVF and the backstory that led to SocialRank
The concept of MVF started when I had a thought, “Who out of all my followers on Twitter is the most valuable?” I immediately emailed Michael (this was in January 2012) to see if he could figure this out, before falling asleep for the night. By the time I woke up the next morning Michael had built the first version of MVF.
What MVF did was look at your Twitter followers and tell you who, out of all of them, was most valuable. The original MVF formula looked at “value” as a scarcity (think supply/demand). The tool looked at your total follower count and follower/following ratio and determined value. So, if you had 100k followers and followed 100k accounts (ratio of 1), you were not that valuable. If you had 100k followers and followed 100 accounts (ratio of 1,000) you were very valuable. MVF worked in some respects. For example, Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon, tried the tool and his most valuable follower was the CTO of Cisco (Michael also “fan-boyed out” and Werner gave us some love which was awesome).
Anyways, MVF went viral and we had over 50,000 people use it in the first week. It was glorious. We had no intention to turn it into a business at that time and a month or two later we ended up joining Dwolla. We then made the decision to shut down MVF, as opposed to leaving it unsupported (which I think we can all agree was the right decision). So we shut MVF down, put up a nice note thanking people for trying it, and joined Dwolla. Then something interesting happened, every few months a different brand would reach out and ask us to turn it back on. After talking to a handful of them, we found out that the majority wanted a tool to tell them more about the people who followed them on Twitter so they could engage and reward the best of them. We kept this in mind and once Michael and I were ready to start our own company we began thinking about all the brands that reached out to us in the past two years. The intelligence we received when talking to them was that they had a ton of good working tools that focus on getting more reach across social platforms (more RT’s, Fav’s, Follows, Likes, Pins, Shares, etc.) so they didn’t need another tool for that. What they did have a blind spot in was around the people that follow them on these platforms. Not what they are saying, but who they are. So Michael and I decided to get hyper-focused on building a product that helps individuals and brands find out more information about their existing followers. And for now, only on Twitter.
SocialRank: MVF + MEF + Best Follower
So here we are, launching MVF 2.0 and calling it SocialRank. We have three important phrases to understand: MVF, MEF, and Best Follower.
Most Valuable Follower (MVF)
The first thing to note is that MVF is now a data point. We have a new and improved MVF, taking into account a myriad of things on top of your reach and ratio of follower/following. MVF tells you who your most valuable, scarce, important, and useful follower is (irrespective of if they interact with you). This can be a great metric for individuals and brands looking to activate a potentially un-engaged but very “valuable” follower.
Most Engaged Follower (MEF)
On top of MVF, we have a new metric called MEF, which stands for Most Engaged Follower. MEF tells you who, out of your followers, has engaged with you the most in the past 30 days. This takes Retweets, Favorites, @ mentions (both replies and native), as well as a few more data points. MEF may be easily determined in your mind if you only have a few followers, but this can be a headache for a brand with tens, hundreds, or even millions of followers. While MVF and MEF are important, the real significant metric and focal point when you log in is a new concept we have dubbed Best Follower.
Best Follower
Best Follower is the perfect combination of your most valuable and most engaged follower. Best Follower balances your MVF and MEF to tell you who your best follower is in the past 30 days. Your Best Follower is exactly that: the person or brand that strikes a great balance of engaging with you and has the reach or importance to be a little dangerous (in a good way!). It’s important to note that just because someone is your MVF, doesn’t mean they will be your Best Follower, same with someone being your MEF. The most likely scenario is that your Best Follower is not your MVF or your MEF (i.e. your Best Follower could be your #8 MVF and #2 MEF).
Monthly Reports + Basic Filters
We are taking the product a few steps further this time. We have added a monthly reporting system that will give you changes to your Top 10 Best Followers. Every month you will receive an email with a link to your Top 10 MVF, MEF, and Best Follower changes.
On top of monthly reports, you can also filter between individuals and brands on the top right side of each section. This allows you to see your top 10 brands and top 10 individuals in the MEF, MVF and Best Follower categories. Post-launch we will allow for deeper filtering.
Everything to this point is free. Woo hoo!
SocialRank Premium (Free for Nonprofits)
If you are inclined to get more insight into your followers, we are releasing a premium version. In SocialRank Premium you not only have the ability to make daily and weekly reports, but you also get individualized breakdowns of demographic (ie age, gender, ethnicity), geographic (ie US or International) and all social media accounts attached to the individual or brand for your Top 50 Best Followers. Twitter does not collect a lot of this information when you sign up so this is pretty cool. We are still in the early testing phase on accuracy (we share probability of it being correct next to results), inferring a lot through technology, but improving daily. SocialRank Premium will cost $25/mo (or $250/year) which we think is a great price point for brands (and individuals who want to dig deeper about the people who follow them). It’s basically less than $1 a day for a report you should already be getting!
If you are a non profit and can prove your 501(c)(3) status we are happy to give you SocialRank Premium for free. Please email me at alex@modernmast.com with the appropriate info and I will upgrade you (Note: We have automated all functions on the site, besides this, but we feel this is important and a great tool that will help NPO’s. So please bear with us if it takes a day or two to upgrade you).
Examples of Brands Rewarding Best Follower
We are also happy to showcase a few brands already using the SocialRank platform to identify and reward (surprise and delight) their Most Valuable, Engaged and Best Followers on Twitter.
Everyone loves GoPro. You can’t not love them. Often used in extreme action video photography, GoPro is the go to tool for surfing, auto racing, skiing, bicycling and the occasional high-altitude skydiving mission. When I first ran my personal SocialRank report, I saw that a guy named Kevin Plashton followed me. I looked up his account and saw he ran digital marketing for GoPro. I immediately followed and DM’d him to tell him about we had coming out. Flash-forward to the launch and GoPro will be rewarding one of their best followers with a GoPro HERO3+ Black Edition, Jaws Flex Clamp and a Head Strap. Go GoPro!
One of my favorite brands in the last two years is Harry’s Grooming. You can buy Harry’s razors, german engineered blades and shaving cream online for a fair price. Jon Goldmann, the Director of Social Media at Harry’s was one of those people/brand that reached out to us to turn MVF back on (and one of the reasons Michael and I started SocialRank). Jon and Harry’s are happy to reward one of their Best Followers on Twitter with an Engraved Winston.
Spotify is a league of their own when it comes to giving their subscribers millions of songs at their fingertips. I am a proud Spotify Premium member and listen to my playlists daily. So we are excited that Spotify is going to be giving a free month of Spotify Premium to one of their most engaged followers on Twitter, found via SocialRank.
Anyone that knows Michael and I know we are very fond of Carly and Danielle, the founders of theSkimm. We’ve known them since day 1 (of theSkimm) and it is still the best daily e-mail newsletter that gives you everything you need to start your day. We are excited to finally find a way to work together, as they will be rewarding one of their most engaged followers on Twitter with some very hard to acquire theSkimm swag (t-shirt and mug).
Plated makes it easy for you to cook a fantastic gourmet meal in thirty minutes or less. Plated is a recent graduate of the TechStars program in New York and is spreading like a wildfire. Plated was recently featured in Entrepreneur Magazine’s as one of 10 Startups to Watch in 2014. Plated will be rewarding one of their best followers on Twitter one box of Plated, which is 4 plates!
Cory Vines is my favorite activewear brand. Based in Montreal, they are building an activewear company for people leading active, interesting lives. When I caught up with Founder/CEO, Daniel Lieberman, I told him what we have coming out and he immediately wanted to use SocialRank to find out more about CV’s followers on Twitter. For the launch, Cory Vines is giving a free “The Racerback Tank” to one of their best followers on Twitter.
This is just the beginning. We accomplished all of this in a little over a month, with two (and a half) people. We are excited for the future of SocialRank.
- Alexander Taub, co-founder of Modern Mast
P.S. Tomorrow I will write a personal post on Alex’s Tech Thoughts about the goals we have for SocialRank. So stay tuned!
tl;dr SocialRank is MVF 2.0. You see your Top 10 Most Valuable, Engaged, and Best Overall Followers. Monthly reports for free. Daily, Weekly, Top 50 and Individualized breakdown of who people are cost $25 per month.
