According to the article, the US firms suggest that marketers should bid against each other to target users. In order to do this, a score is given to every posters based on the amount they post and the times they are tagged or mentioned in others’ posts.

As it is mentioned in the article, the authority score includes the following stuff:

• The number of posts, reposts and retweets they make
• The type of products they “like”
• The lists they subscribe to
• The amount of times others write about them
• How influential their own followers are

The information together gives clues to which advertisements that the website will choose to better satisfy users’ needs. In the blogs that I posted before, Instagram and Facebook are all adding advertisements but Instagram chooses the advertisements that match the users’ interests. In this way, the company can get the revenue stream from the advertisement but meanwhile does not upset users to keep business ethics. This is pretty much the same thing as the authority score. The authority score gives a even more complete information of what users are interested in. Personally, I think this is a good and realistic plan.

Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22895781