Silvio has more QDOS – hang on

This has been quite a week for posts about internet gadgets, stats, surveys and politicians’ strategies for using the internet. Today some diligent folks at BBPR had searched for ‘italian politics blog’ in Google UK and came across this post of mine about Silvio Berlusconi, and sent me a press release about how Berlusconi ranks higher than his opponent Walter Veltroni in terms of online presence in a rating system called QDOS. Silvio’s rating is Q6560 as I write, and Veltroni’s is Q4056. The information I was sent goes on to say “We can observe that although Berlusconi and Veltroni have similar scores for activity, Berlusconi’s score for impact is much higher.”

Hang on. Is there actually a sensible online strategy here? Or is Belusconi just sounding off and saying silly things that the media picks up on? Things like that the women on the left of Italian politics are uglier – see the BBC and The Telegraph about that. Plus as Berlusconi has twice been Prime Minister and is internationally known it’s surely evident that his online score is going to be higher. The fact that Silvio owns most of Italy’s media will surely also help him… The linguistic approach of QDOS is also far from clear. Looking at the main election websites for Silvio and Walter there’s little to separate them at first glance.

Anyway, from a 71-year old crooner with false hair and a pacemaker to me, poor little website designer. I’ve put data into QDOS about myself and come up with a rating shown above – Q2037 at the time of writing. That puts me just above Paul Weller, and just below Michael Ballack and H.R.H. Prince bin Abdullah Bin Mohammed bin Thunayan Alsaud. I feel privileged… Although what that actually means is beyond me!