An application called MrTweet caught my attention over the weekend, mostly due to a discussion on influence initiated by its creator, Steve Ming Yeow Ng. Check out the discussion at the MrTweet blog.

Two important points from the discussion:

1. Influence is in the eye of the audience.

2. No such thing as a universal grade for influence.

These points resonate with Josh Greenbaum’s comments, as well as the mantra shared by Duncan, Nick, me and the rest of Influencer50.

As for MrTweet: I’m on the record as a died-in-the-wool skeptic on these kinds of applications. None have given me worthwhile recommendations or insights to date. Now MrTweet is in the hot seat. I’ve followed MrTweet and will share my thoughts once it returns something. As with so many of these social network applications, MrTweet puts an awfully big stake in the ground:

“I’ll suggest to you which influencers and followers you should check out.”

OK, MrTweet. Pimp my twitterverse.

Duncan raises some good points about the evolution of blogs and microblogs (i.e. Twitter).  Blogging is becoming the online publishing platform of choice in many industries, from politics to pharma. This has a couple of implications for influencer programs in 2009.

Top of my list, is that 2009 should see the end of consternation over classifying influencers as “bloggers” or in terms of their other roles in a market or community, be it their job title, employer, profession or expertise. 

The crossover point started to become clear in mainstream tech media relations when you could no longer distinguish between columnists and bloggers at ZDNet and other top-10 media networks.  

In analyst relations, Gartner brought the point home a few months ago with the launch of the Gartner Blog Network.  Trust me, no one is dithering over whether to reclassify Gartner employees from analysts to bloggers.

Sure, some people will be best classified as “bloggers”, just as we still have syndicated columnists from the hardcopy print days.  In general though, the confusion over doctor-lawyer-blogger man-thief should die down.

Many of us are thinking about how we weave influencer relations and social media into traditional marketing programs. Todd Defren, a popular blogger and principal at SHIFT Communications, spends a lot of time on this, and in particular on the intersection of PR and social media. He’s raised a valid question: is there a point where the label “PR agency” no longer applies? Should public relations agencies deeply engaged in social media channels adopt a new category, such as social media agency?

There’s no right or wrong answer to Todd’s question. Nonetheless, it’s important for each of us to follow his example, and ask. Growth is messy and organic. We can’t throw a switch to jump from a traditional track to running on a whole new set of rails. Instead, we have to stop and step out of the moment, and take in where we are and ask ourselves what we’ve become.

Influencer relations, mobile communications, and social media will challenge each of us to decide whether to come up with new definitions for our old marketing labels, or to adopt new labels.

Today I saw 2 more threads in the ongoing debate over whether social media popularity is a good way to measure influence.

First, my colleague Duncan Brown writes that Google is launching an AdWords-style SEM program across big social networks.

As an online publisher, I can see how this Google program makes perfect sense for media buyers. It will play from Madison Avenue to Main Street. After all, the big advertisers say they plan to shift their remaining 2008 and 2009 spending, cutting traditional ad spending while increasing spending on word of mouth and other forms of social media. (For the latest CMO study visit Epsilon; hat tip to Ken Rutowski for flagging it in his newsletter.) Google is offering just the right media product to pick up those extra dollars and euros. I’ve got no issue there.

However, I do see a potential downside. Call it collateral damage. Google is portraying the program as a measure of influence. Duncan describes the confusion this could cause:

“If Google’s plans get more firms to talk about influence, then fine. But I fear that it will dumb influence down to a few ‘magic’ numbers that have tenuous relevance to real influence.”

Meanwhile, Graham Hill and I compared notes this morning on Peter Kim’s post, “Influencer Lists as Ego Traps“. We came up agreeing, in Graham’s words:

“Popular people are not necessarily good influencers. And influencers are not necessarily popular. There is much more to it than that.”

We’ve got some very bright people on both sides of the debate — those advocating that we equate influence with popularity/connectedness, those advising against it. Neither side is ready to blink.

In the end, the media buyers may have the final vote on whether online popularity is the path to the influentials.

Tom Smith’s guest post at Mashable makes the point that we now trust the opinions of strangers as much as we trust our close friends, thanks to social media. He’s highlighting findings from the Universal McCann study, “When did we start trusting strangers”. Don’t let yourself get lulled into thinking this phenomenon is taking place only in consumer markets. Social media is also changing the way that businesses source trusted opinions on products and services.

Social media is transforming B2B decision-maker ecosystems in two fundamental ways. The most notable, according to Influencer50 research, is that more categories of advisors are exerting more influence during B2B purchase decisions. Social media is helping make many types of “hidden” advisors more visible, more accessible, more informed.

Another change is the appearance of new types of influencers. Examples include niche consultants, procurement groups, and expert communities.

The bottomline is that social media is changing the way we slice the B2B influence pie, just as it is changing influence in consumer markets.

Vinnie Mirchandani is one the enterprise IT influencers not attending Oracle OpenWorld in the flesh this year. Instead, he’s plugging into event content and buzz through the new “Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Influencer Community.” Smart move by Oracle.

Oracle invited media and bloggers alike to join this event-specific influencer community. That means bloggers don’t need to request access from different marketing groups or provide different kinds of information. There’s just one place/process for joining, whether you are a journalist, blogger-journalist, blogger-analyst, blogger-consultant, blogger-pundit, etc.

This is not to say that Oracle marketing, sales and support departments no longer quibble over how to classify specific bloggers. Silos are a fact of life in most marketing departments. It’s just that in this instance, the silo mechanics are hidden neatly behind the curtain.

Big step in the right direction.

Voices arguing that blogger popularity does not equate to influence lost a little more ground this week. A new ad network promises to deliver influential blogs to media buyers. My reaction is a mix of cheering and concern.

What’s up: San Francisco-based BuzzLogic has launched its BuzzLogic Ad Targeting service. Essentially, the service enables companies to identify and place ads on the most popular (linked) blogs on a given topic. The ad service is based on BuzzLogic’s social media monitoring solution for PR.

I cheer because many high-profile bloggers need more and better revenue options. Most find out the hard way that advertising revenues from Google Ads do not trend upward with any kind of reliability. Meanwhile, sponsors can be hard to find and harder to sign. Even influential bloggers like Tom Foremski speak candidly about the challenges of growing new media revenues.

I cringe because there’s been so much controversy over the impact of pay-for-play on the reputation of industry analysts. There’s a deep-rooted perception that vendor revenues taint analyst objectivity. What’s to stop the same sort of backlash from tarnishing the most popular bloggers?