Finding and measuring influential bloggers part II – The Leadership Question

Keren published another interesting post about ways to identify leadership of bloggers. He asks:

So, how do we discover this (leadership) potential as early as possible and monitor it? One’s blog is just the tip of the iceberg and not enough to uncover upcoming leaders. We can only use it as a lead (prospect) for further research.
Will we see a leader search engine that will find: Maki Dosh, Caroline, Andy Beard, Laura Athavale Fitton(Pistachio) and many others?

He also compares Scoble and Jeff's influence in the industry.

But what about sources of power?  Jeff is an influential individual offline, that uses his online activities to reach new people, and give insight to his views.  He started with VON and then started blogging (correct me if I am wrong...). Scoble gained his influence, at least in the early days, from his great blog, who gave a human face to Microsoft. The difference is huge between the two, in their paths of leadership.

We still fail to answer the key questions:

Does one measure influence by the sheer amount of twitter updates? or just followers? or just Facebook friends? Or just the cumulative value of one's social networks connections? I return to the basic example I usually give - if I have 10 Facebook friends, does it mean that I less influential than the one who has 100?

And my last question - aren't all those matrix relevant only to online aware leaders to be? Meaning, does tomorrow's Ghandi need a blog to succeed, Facebook profile to become known, and twitter to notify his followers about his views? 

A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees a blog post in every difficulty

Tags: facebook, twitter, blog, social media, jeff pulver, robert scoble