Standardising social media metrics

The British spelling is a reminder that the thinking about social media and its practices doesn't always come from California and New York. Consider the state of social media measurement, which means different things depending on who's talking. Will McInnes, of Brighton-based social media agency NixonMcInnes, has kicked off an attempt to develop open source standards for measuring social media.

Will describes some of the problems of the current situation. Does any of this sound familiar?

The problems we have in measuring social media is that the current ways of measuring are:

• not well recognised (not the 'how we measure' but the 'what to measure'
  
• not agreed on (it seems each provider has their way)
  global?
  
• not helpful to everyone that uses them (this is what I've heard from clients)
  
• aren't robust - there are substantial question marks over methods and proof (this is what I've heard from researchy people)
  
• are closed and proprietary

First proposed during the discussion of social media measurement at Chinwag Live a couple of weeks ago, the project is getting started with a wiki, MeasurementCamp, and will continue in a follow-up discussion "coming very soon" in London. It's early, and the wiki is more promise than substance, but it should be interesting to see what a cross-section of the social media crowd comes up with.

Of course, this isn't the first wiki on measurement, so here's a question for you: where else is the discussion about metrics and potential standards taking place? I can think of three sites, not counting all of the blog posts on the topic.

• MeasurementCamp
  
• Social Media Measurement on TheNewPR Wiki
  
• Social Media Measurement on Facebook