Is Fanrank really Spamrank?

This week I was recognized as a #1 Fan by a celebrity based on my participation with Fanrank.
Woo Hoo !?!




Fanrank is a Facebook application that tracks participant activity on Facebook and Twitter with participants earning points by posting and tweeting the keywords and phrases assigned by the Fan Page.  Some of participating artist/celebrities offer rewards to their top ranking fans.


Social media can be fun.  It offers opportunity for fans to share their appreciation of an artist to a much broader audience than ever before. We all come to the appreciation of an artist in a personal and unique way because of the connection between our life experiences. And those of us who enjoy social media have a lot to lose as social media becomes social marketing. At the heart of social media is a desire to engage with friends and family as a community. As a fan, I want to share my appreciation of an artist and build a community around mutual regard.


Fanrank sounds like a good idea - track your fans and reward the ones with the most effective broadcasting - a virtual street team, no streets required.  For an artist or celebrity it appears to be low-cost grass-roots marketing campaign.  It doesn’t really work that way, though, because the Fanrank application has holes big enough to drive a tour bus through.


Fanrank’s flaws are easily exploited by the newest of the newbies.  On Facebook, the application cannot determine actual distribution because it doesn’t know if you are broadcasting publicly or to a limited list. Fanrank doesn’t evaluate content, it recognizes keywords but it doesn’t distinguish between nonsense, inane banter or actual conversations.  Fanrank is not context sensitive and doesn’t know if a published post is bashing or praising the artist.


Fanrank is superficial, automated, mechanical and promotes spammy posts and tweets.  It turns artist appreciation into a popularity contest, encourages competition and one-upmanship, pits fans against one another all in pursuit of recognition and, in some Fanranks, actual prize rewards.


Fanrank is a beta application with serious structural flaws that are exploitable with little effort. Fanrank fails in both of its goals, stated and unstated: it cannot measure or identify the true meaningful emotional investment of a fan and it does not succeed in measuring the market penetration of the fans who use the application.



#FAIL