Is the Google new strategy a SocialRank algorithm

PageRank is the foundation of Google, but doesn’t do social very well. With Google Plus will we see a SocialRank emerge?  Now this is not new either for Google or for the likes of PeerIndex or Klout who have already added many sources of data for its rankings and are fighting to become the default measure of online influence, something that advertisers and marketers in particular are extremely interested in as they try to identify “influencers” who can spread their messages

SocialRank will be based on Digital Footprint data that comes from Blog, Google +, Twitter, Facebook, Quora and LinkedIn accounts and one does expect the same underlying ideas of PageRank – insomuch that your digitalfootprint data comes from you and there is a need to balance this with data that others say about your or your data. Digital Footprint 101

Klout focus is on overall “reach” and “amplification” These are determined by looking at a user’s activity and how much impact it has on their social graph (whether their tweets are re-tweeted by others with influence)

Whereas PeerIndex looks at a user’s activity in and generates an authority rank for their expertise in 8 topics, which create an influence “footprint” for each user. PeerIndex does look for “realness,” you are a person and not an automated feed or “spambot”

Mashup applications and services are emerging on the back of SocialRanking. Some retailers are starting to offer perks to Klout users who have high scores based on the premise of access to “influencers”.  Peersquare  (PeerIndex and Foursquare) is ranking people who are in the same location as you, something that could be useful during a conference or other event.  Salesforce.com has even talked about compensating employees based on their influence within social networks, Think the Social CV

Google now has it own social silo in the form of Google +, but it doesn’t appear to be in the best position to use others social data if locked into the silo where Google cannot index it. So does Google plan is to kill off Facebook and get all social data in its own Silo combined with other open data, or will they give the data to the user.  So far Google has gone down the open route and you can grad all your data (Data Liberation) that is there and the privacy controls look good.

But if data is cheap and is the analysis is key, will someone elect to undermine Google by putting the algorithms into an open space?