TRAACKR

It’s that time again! The Traackr team is excited to highlight the Influencer of the Month for the “ho-ho” holiday month of December. Read on!

Who is Anthony Padilla?

Most 22-year-olds are finishing up college and getting ready to enter the grueling work world of 9-5 jobs, but not Anthony. Instead, he has led the path of the new celebrity in entertainment – YouTube Celebrities. Ask most tweens, teens and even 20-something’s and they will probably know of Anthony’s humorous antics and good looks from his comedy duo YouTube channel, Smosh, which he co-creates with childhood friend Ian Hecox.

We first spotted Anthony in his number one influencer spot on our teen male influencers list. Since then, we have been amazed by his dedication to the online space and his communities, his clever comedy skits – one of which was awarded YouTube’s Best Comedy Award in 2006 – and his keen sense of knowing exactly what it takes to become an online super star.

Since Smosh’s beginning in 2005, it has become the third most subscribed to YouTube channel and continues to rise in popularity among the younger generations. It was this popularity that landed the duo among YouTube’s initial participants in their partnership revenue-sharing program in 2007. Interestingly enough, one of the revenue generating agreements that came out of the program was a sponsorship deal with Live Video – one of YouTube’s competitors. It’s not everyday you can say you got paid by one of your host’s competitors with everyone in agreement!

In addition to the more than 1 million subscribers on YouTube and almost 300 million views of their videos (that’s right 300,000,000 views!), Smosh has large amounts of followers among their multiple social media platforms, some of which include more than 45,000 followers on Twitter and more than 150,000 friends on MySpace. Anthony and Ian have even been business saavy enough to build what some might call an empire with the Smosh name, including t-shirts, posters, gift cards, games and contests.

Most importantly, however, is that aside from the Smosh name, Anthony has done very well with his own name by creating a fan base that is happy to follow his funny attitude and charming smile anywhere he pops up. Proof is in the numbers – he has been able to accumulate over 30,000 followers on Twitter, over 2,700 fans on Facebook and over 1,300 subscribers on his personal YouTube channel.

It is the amazing reach Anthony has throughout multiple major social media platforms-whether it is through his own name or Smosh’s-that got him a spot as our December influencer. At only 22 years old, Anthony demonstrates the true epitome of the power of online influencers and possibly even the future of the entertainment industry.

Fast Company (soap box)

We read through this month’s Fast Company cover story, “Mr. Social: Ashton Kutcher Plans to Be the Next New-Media Mogul” and felt the need to discuss it. And after having read through a summary of the impact Anthony Padilla has had on the online space for a number of years, we think you might feel the same way. So please, join us on our soap box.

We just couldn’t help but notice that many of the things Fast Company said Ashton is “leading the way for” are many things influencers like Anthony have already accomplished. For instance, Ashton has been filming a mini-series that he hopes will evolve into a go-to source for brands to spread their message through influencer marketing. Well, the Smosh channel is filled with sponsored episodes that reach more than one million viewers. These are numbers that would have late night show hosts crying in joy over.  The fact of the matter is that Anthony has been doing many of these “new media mogul” things for years, and he shows no signs of slowing down. We believe the integration of new media and entertainment is already here and it began with influencers like Anthony – it didn’t begin and will not end with Ashton. So, can we get Anthony and maybe even his comedy duo, Ian, on the cover of Fast Company stat?

Ok, we’ll step off our soap box now.

Thanks to everyone who sent in submissions for our PR2.0 influencer contest.  It was a very interesting experiment for us and we’re very happy for the participation.  Thanks!

The List…Revealed

Without further ado (drumroll please), we can now release the “unmasked”, totally exposed list of the Top 25 Authorities moving PR Forward.  As you can see, the Top 5 Authorities moving PR Forward are:

#5 – Steve Rubel

#4 – Jason Falls

#3 – Sarah Evans

#2 – Brian Solis

#1 – Chris Brogan

Surprised (we were)? Excited?  Disappointed?

Contest Winner

The entries were very interesting.  It was actually difficult to determine the winner with several top contributors offering very similar pics.  With that said, there was not one single entry that picked everyone on the Top 5 — let alone in the right order.  However, the one who came the closest was the team at @PerkettPR (led by @pprlisa) who guessed the Top 3 correctly…making them the closest of anyone in the contest.  So, congratulations @pprlisa and the rest at @PerkettPR — we will be forwarding your $50 Amazon gift card to Lisa’s email today!  Nice job!

In case you are interested here are the % of submissions that selected the Top 5 (respectively):

• Chris Brogan – apx 65%
• Brian Solis – apx 60%
• Sarah Evans – apx 35%
• Jason Falls – apx 20%
• Steve Rubel – apx 20%

Interesting stuff.  A couple of people who were mentioned by many of the submissions were Michael Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) and Richard MacManus (founder of Mashable)…this is an important point as it refers to Traackr’s methodology.  While both of these blogs are extremely influential — what we do at Traackr is locate the specific author on each site who is most relevant to the topic at hand.  In this case, Sarah Evans is the most relevant Mashable author.  Knowing this is very, very powerful for those trying to gain insight into the influencers in a specific topic area.

One Final Note

After releasing the initial list earlier this week, we received some (passionate) comments about #15: Strumpette (aka Amanda Chapel) is a fictional character that has been created by a PR professional (some say there are multiple authors behind Strumpette) to speak AGAINST social media and the traditional pro-PR 2.0 rhetoric.  So, some people thought she should be removed from the list.   We respectfully disagree.  It happens quite often with our work that influencers from both sides of an issue make the list.  It is important to note that at Traackr we believe that the sentiment of one’s content does not drive or define influence.  The fact that they built a following listening to, engaging with them and amplifying the signal defines their influence.  In fact, we would argue that knowing the influential voices on the other side of the aisle are just as important in almost any circumstance. As for the “fake” identity, Traackr’s philosophy is always to try to identify the person behind the content, rather than a mere URL or Twitter handle. That said, non of our geeky technologists have a background on intelligence gathering or P.I., and nor should they: if influencers we find don’t feel comfortable sharing their “real” name on their public feeds, we won’t look for it – this is really no different from the use of aliases by authors, actors and journalists we have come to accept for centuries.

With all that said — congrats to PerkettPR and thanks to everyone for participating!

Last month we decided to start an Influencer of the Month feature on our blog.  Then, of course things got crazy around here and we didn’t have time to release our Influencer of the Month for October as planned.  So, we’re going to do it now — in the middle of November.

A bit late on our end, for which we apologize.  We will definitely get them out on time in the future (last Friday of every month).  However, please do not allow our tardiness to devalue the talent of our Influencer for October: Brett McKay.

Who is Brett McKay?

We had no idea until he showed up on one of our recent Authority Lists for online DIY influencers. Brett appeared on the list because of his work on his primary blog —  The Art of Manliness (apx 150k monthly unique visitors).  Brett’s blog is a smart, fun portal for all things Man-ly.  He’s done a tremendous job building a brand around the Art of Manliness — as well as a loyal audience.  He furthers his work on his blog through two twitter accounts, @brettmckay (1,500+ followers, 700+ re-tweets) and @artofmanliness (5,800 followers, 1,100+ re-tweets); a YouTube channel; two Facebook pages, his (631 friends) & Art of Manliness (7,800+ friends); LinkedIn; and a StumbledUpon account.

One of the reasons why we’ve selected Brett this month is for his skills and use of multiple social media tools/platforms.  That is important for any influencer we consider.

Another reason we like Brett is because he is in the midst of translating his online success to additional offline success with the release of his first book – The Art of Manliness (what else?).  From all accounts the book is doing well.  For us at Traackr, this is a very exciting trend that we continue to see…and celebrate.  More and more, people are building their brands online, through social media, and creating value, enterprises…empires offline.  Brett is one of the early ones and we’re very happy to see it happen!

With all that said, the real reason we chose Brett for our Influencer of the Month for October is that the Art of Manliness wasn’t his first successful online endeavor.  Not at all.  While a law student at the University of Tulsa, Brett started and built a very successful blog, The Frugal Law Student, which was named the top student blog by the ABA Journal in ‘07.  This is what we call a true online talent.

Our decision to select Brett as our Influencer for this month is not really about his current online endeavor and success.  We’ve selected him because he personifies one of Traackr’s fundamental beliefs in this whole new world — the idea that the individuals who generate influence online are talented people.  The content they create is very much secondary to that.  It doesn’t matter if they are talking about Ramen noodles or straight razors, knitting patterns or new marketing strategies.  It’s the person doing the talking which is where the influence is derived.  It’s why we started Traackr.  Brett (and many others) is proving our point with every post…

Thanks and congratulations to Brett McKay for being named Traackr’s Influencer of the Month for October!

DS

*by the way, here’s a good post from Chris Brogan (Content is Not King) which helps illustrate this last point.  The comments for this post are great as well…

We are back from DEMO. What a fantastic event! Thank you Chris Shipley for inviting us and good luck in your future endeavor (this was Chris last year, after 13 years,  as an executive director for DEMO).

The format for the event, 6 minutes on stage, puts all the companies on an even playing field and creates a true sense of “we are all on the same boat”. The energy was terrific and you could see that all the presenters were excited about launching their new product (often the results of months of work). Companies were coming from all over the world and took the stage with a passion (even if it also meant being very nervous for most).

At DEMO, we launched our new product, Traackr’s Authority List (or A-List for short). Take a look at our presentation on stage.

We also got some great press coverage.  Check out these articles about Traackr’s Authority List: Mashable, Venture Beat, France 24

Thanks again to DEMO, the great DEMO team and the rest of the DemoFall09 alumn…

We are happy to announce the launch of Traackr’s Online Authority List at DemoFall09 in San Diego.

Traackr’s Authority List will the cornerstone of our business interface for marketers and PR professionals looking to locate top influencers for their brand or product.  The A-List will also be a tool which will enable the all-important relationship building between the communication pro and the influencer.

The Traackr team feels proud and privileged to have been selected by the DEMO team to launch our new product at a conference that has seen the emergence of Skype, TiVo, E-Trade, Salesforce.com, Java, Acrobat and many other groundbreaking innovations.

We are walking in the footsteps of giants and we won’t disappoint!