NowPublic is one of the fastest growing participatory news networks in the world. Time Magazine voted it last year one of the top 50 websites and The Guardian UK declared it's one of the top 5 most resourceful news sites in the world.

They have come up with a way to measure "news influence" on the web. They insinuated that traffic to one's site and/or blog is not one of the lead indicators, but how the people listed are connected to others (especially other influencers) through social media like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and others.

I honestly don't know what to make of this list. I am at the same time amused and disturbed.

I already published at The Daily Gotham how it's weird that Arianna Huffington comes in at #2 because I thought she lived in California, not New York City. Then there's the grand daddy of the New York blogeratti, Nick Denton, coming in at #34.

It is though rather refreshing to see friends and colleagues on that list : Anil Dash, Nancy Scola, Joshua Levy, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung and one of my biggest inspirations as a web designer and developer, Jeffrey Zeldman.

Yet, and I repeat what I already said at our New York site, the most disturbing data point of this list is that I come in at #9.

Yup.

I am, as per NowPublic, one of the "top ten" news influencers in the New York new media market.

I will definitely have more to say about this new metrics system. Suffice it to say that I think it is not only thought provoking but vindicating.

It's cool that someone has been able to measure what I've been up to for the last two years : Building a sphere of influence through networked broadcasting and outside of the metrics of traffic volume or popularity.

As a former student of neo-baroque aesthetics and its network effect in arts, culture and communications, I felt inspired of the potential I saw on the web 12 years ago. It was a potential that I saw unfolding in the Net Art movement. And it was a potential that I saw come to a halt when Big Business, Big Media and Big Politics threw themselves on the net as a way to accelerate their hierarchical and teleological standards of growth and success.

Think of the 3 Bigs thwarting the growth of the net by imposing the growth of the walled web gardens a la Facebook, Daily Kos or The New York Times.

Yet networks are networks and old standards of influence and success will succumb to the net effect; not to the old measures as a result of the false scarcity and uniqueness created by popularity.

So, even though I truly believe this is a flawed index, it is by far the best attempt at measuring influence based on assumptions that are native to the technology and structure of community and communications on the web.

NOWPUBLIC LAUNCHES THE “MOSTPUBLIC INDEX” IDENTIFIES THE WEB’S 50 MOST INFLUENTIAL INDIVIDUALS IN NEW YORK
Vancouver, B. C. – July 21, 2008—NowPublic (http://www.nowpublic.com/), the world's largest participatory news network, today announced the launch of the MostPublic Index, a detailed barometer of the most public news influencers of today’s digital world, illustrating how a new breed of influencer is shaping the media environment and what’s heard by the general population. Today, news makers and reporters are increasingly indistinguishable. In fact, a teenage Twitterer may have as powerful a voice as the New York Times editorial board. Therefore, NowPublic has defined this new type as “news influencer.” The first MostPublic Index identifies the 50 most influential individuals in New York.

“Visibility and connectedness define today’s elite,” said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic. “Today, there are innumerable new ways for one’s voice to be heard. The goal of the MostPublic Index is to measure who is currently most effective in broadcasting their own personal brand online, as well as identify emerging players.”

“Our ‘MostPublic Index’ is a leading indicator and benchmark of who is really changing the way in which news is being produced and distributed, a core goal of NowPublic and its army of reporters.”

NowPublic created a formula to measure influence and “publicness” across four categories, including:

o Online Visibility
o Presence on User-Generated Content and Social Networking Sites
o Interactivity and Accessibility
o The “R” Factor: Presence on Microblogging Platforms
(Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

NowPublic measured statistics in each of these categories from Facebook, Flickr, Google, Technorati, YouTube, and various other blogs and sites, to create a list of New York’s leading influencers. NowPublic then narrowed the list to 50 by analyzing and documenting individuals’ presence and popularity in each of these channels, applying a weighted scoring system, determined by the strength of specific traits held in each online community. A detailed account of the scoring system can be viewed here: http://www.nowpublic.com/world/most-public-index.

Without further ado, NowPublic proudly presents the MostPublic individuals in New York:

1. Fred Wilson
2. Arianna Huffington
3. Sarah Austin
4. Steve Rubel
5. Noah Brier
6. Anil Dash
7. Gary Vaynerchuk
8. Jeff Jarvis
9. Liza Sabater
10. Loren Feldman

11. Paul Allison
12. Tamar Weinberg
13. Alex Blagg
14. Greg Verdino
15. Jason Kottke
16. Rex Sorgatz
17. Alisa Leonard
18. Brian Morrissey
19. Eric Friedman
20. Jeffrey Zeldman

21. Natali Del Conte
22. Tim Shey
23. Kyle Bunch
24. Anthony Volodkin
25. John Hodgman
26. Nancy Scola
27. Jay Rosen
28. Jen Simmons
29. John Biggs
30. Jake Dobkin

31. Caroline McCarthy
32. Lindsay Robertson
33. Lockhart Steele
34. Nick Denton
35. Scott Kidder
36. Kelly Reeves
37. Rachel Sklar
38. Peter Kafka
39. Jill Fehrenbacher
40. Peter Rojas

41. Robert Lanham
42. Jen Chung
43. Meghan Asha
44. Amy Langfield
45. Josh Levy
46. Allison Mooney
47. Nicholas Carlson
48. Laurel Touby
49. Emily Gould
50. Brian Stelter

The entire list can be viewed here:
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/most-public-index.

The MostPublic Index will issue periodic indexes across a variety of categories, including the MostPublic: American cities; European cities; Asian Cities; Indian Cities; musical influencers; political influencers, pop culture influencers and sports influencers, among others. The next MostPublic Index will identify the 50 most public individuals in Silicon Valley.

About NowPublic
NowPublic is a crowd-sourced, participatory news network that mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In its short history, the company has become the largest news organization of its kind with contributing reporters in more than 5,500 cities and 160 countries. The Guardian has named NowPublic one of the top five most useful news sites on the Web and Time Magazine named it one of the Top 50 Websites for 2007. The company has received funding from Rho Ventures, Rho Canada, Brightspark, GrowthWorks and members of the New York Angels.

[ I also posted about this at our New York blog, The Daily Gotham ]