Is the discussion around/practice of online influence actually regressing? Identifying and then activating influencers is an important topic that deserves informed debate and the implementation of only the best tools. I actually think we have quite a bit of the former, and the latter is the gigantic black hole that we're all getting sucked into.

This interview was originally posted on Mark Evans Tech. Last month (was it really last month!) at the mesh conference, I had a chance to sit down with Edelman's David Armano about the growing focus and importance of influence within the social media landscape.

I was pointed to the following blog post by Brian Solis, The Interest graph on Twitter is Alive - studying Starbucks top followers. Brian's post defines an "interest graph" as a subset of the social graph around a certain topic.