When did social media become like high school – testing your popularity at every turn and promoting the opinions of the most popular?

Recently, there have been a flurry of articles and blog posts on Klout and Digg– even though both have been around for a while. Klout measures your online influence mostly by looking at your Twitter account – number of tweets and followers.  On the other hand, Digg measures content popularity by allowing readers to vote for content they like and want to share. But soon the democratic method of equal voting will change. According to Laura Roeder, Digg will soon experience some changes that include looking at your overall “social footprint” to determine your level of influence.  

Social influence is definitely not new, but it has never been measured to this degree. With the tracking abilities online I am curious to see how social influence will look in the future. For now I will stick with my PostRank on Google Reader for cues as to what is worth reading.