Apparently, God is worth $587,496.20 to Facebook. Comparing that to my worth of $52.40, it makes the man in charge 11,212 more valuable than me. While this is hardly going to explain the mysteries of religion, it is an interesting statistic given the source. Adam Penenberg (the guy who wrote Viralloop – a book worth a read) created a Facebook widget that measures your personal value to Facebook. He claims it’s purpose is to conduct a social experiment on his ‘viral loops’, which it is but it’s also a great way for him to promote his book (which is good as well) – you can calculate your worth to Facebook at the bottom of this post.
The guy with the highest value to Facebook, outside the celeb gang (God’s classed a celeb), is Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, a human powered search engine. Here’s an exert from Penenberg’s interview with Calacanis. I like the hard case facts behind social media success.
PENENBERG: What social networks do you use and what are their respective advantages?
CALACANIS: Ninety-percent of what I do is on Twitter because it’s the most lightweight and quickest. I also get the highest click-through-rate on Twitter (1 to 2% will click on a link, for example, sending 500 to 3,000 folks to a story). I syndicate my Twitter activity to Facebook, but I get very little traffic from it. Whenever I go to a city I try and host an “Open Dim Sum,” which I promote to my Twitter, Facebook and email lists. My email list gets 60% of the RSVPs, 30% from Twitter and maybe 10% via Facebook. I find very few folks are watching their Facebook feed, some are watching their Twitter feed and all of them are watching their email box. So, while social networks are nice, email is still the killer application.
PENENBERG: Do you ever feel too connected and want to run over your iPhone or Blackberry with your car?
CALACANIS: The only time I felt a little too exposed was for a week then I started life-streaming for a couple of hours a day on Qik and Ustream. It became very much like the film “We Live in Public.” I started to feel the need to feed the audience… which basically made me into low quality, cheap fast food. I prefer to be a high-end steak…. and that comes in the form of my email newsletter (“Jason’s List,” with 17,000 subscribers), “This Week in Startups” (my weekly podcast) and TechCrunch50 (my yearly conference with Mike Arrington). I’m feel better when I’m being consumed in my finest form…. no soylent green wafers.
PENENBERG: There are viral characteristics to Mahalo. Can you pinpoint a few of them?
CALACANIS: We pull in questions from Twitter via our @answers and @questions accounts. Just put either of those words at the end of your question and your question will be added to Mahalo Answers and you never have to visit our site (or create an account!). It’s fairly magical to Tweet a question and have quality answers just start flowing in.
[full interview is on Fast Company]
See what you’re worth to Facebook (click here and then select ‘Widget’ from the menu at the top of the page) created by Penenberg, it’s pretty interesting. You can work out if you are worth as much as God.
