In the influencer world, these rankings have been around for nearly twenty years. As one of the early bloggers, I was regularly named in these lists, sometimes right at the top and, like everyone, I was proud of it and sometimes shared it.
These rankings also exist in every profession. One of the best known is Forbes’ 30 under 30. But for almost 10 years, this magazine that everyone wants to be in but nobody reads has multiplied its rankings: in the US alone there are 25 of them, by category (business, ecology, sport, etc.), which lets it promote 250 people a year. Now every country has its own. Who hasn’t seen a winner congratulating themselves on being included? And, for the boldest, claiming to be surprised at being named when they had sent in an application beforehand?
And everyone has a list of their own:
So on one side you have media outlets that legitimise the companies and professionals in their sector, ideally to keep them as clients or advertisers, and on the other, players who want to legitimise their own position by featuring people who will spread the word for them.
Because apart from the never-ending rankings of Choiseul (6 in Q4 2024 alone19), who actually listens to what this think tank has to say? Not even the media, who nonetheless relay its rankings.
And how are the winners chosen? In complete opacity. Still, in 2021, a fintech boss20 told me he loved politics and cited this think tank as an example. At the same time, he was co-running, with Yves Hemedinger, an MP for the Haut-Rhin from Les Républicains (France’s mainstream right-wing party), the ideas unit of La Manufacture, Xavier Bertrand’s micro-party, while also being vice-president of the Fondation Concorde, another think tank, for which he signed two op-eds in the business daily Les Échos in 2020. Around the same time, the former-and-future Les Républicains man was gearing up for 2022, and the former online bank boss was quitting his job to join Bertrand. With the success we all know.
Although he has never highlighted this period of his life in his many interviews or podcasts, nor on his LinkedIn, he appears in the Choiseul 100 for a brief stint he has since removed from his CV. A ranking that came at the very moment he was telling me he worked with this think tank. And at the very moment he was becoming the French boss of a fintech launching in the country. A list he has never left since.
And yet, despite his 35K followers on LinkedIn, who like most of his posts between 100 and 300 times, he isn’t in the Favikon “personal finance” ranking21. Not because he runs a company, since in property you’ll find, for example, Véronique Bédague, head of the developer Nexity. Surprisingly, the list includes (besides a few clients of mine 😍) Ludovic de Jouvancourt de Channes, ex-CEO of Prello (29th), who hasn’t posted for 6 months. But no sign of Thierry Vignal, Raphaël Oziel, Olivier Lendrevie, David Hérault, Ori Chamla, Cedric O’Neill, Guillemette Despresle, Stéphane Fritz, Olivier Descamps, Marc Boceno etc.
Whether one should rank above another hardly matters. But there’s another problem that raises serious questions, not just about the ranking but above all about the tool it’s supposed to represent: the share of fake engagement.
To double the comments on a post, all you have to do is reply to everyone. Even with a single emoji. Numerous tests run during 2023 showed that Favikon did not count the author’s own comments any differently. But above all, many LinkedIn users, several of whom feature in the lists, use the app Podawaa.
Launched by Waalaxy (one of the leaders in LinkedIn automation), this very discreet French SaaS that nobody talks about lets you order likes, but also comments written by the author of the post. The app then uses the accounts of real users, also signed up to Podawaa, to publish them.
A user who has just ordered 3 comments he wrote himself, which will be published automatically by other Podawaa users, through their real LinkedIn accounts.
A practice so taboo that it’s impossible to search for the term on LinkedIn.