The Official Klout Blog

It brings back memories watching that clip of you presenting at the NY Tech Meetup alongside us, CoTweet and StockTwits. Fun night. Good to see your Klout score has increased since then!

I actually really appreciate the concept of Klout.  I’d like to see an evolution where Klout incorporates a StumbleUpon feature where I can search high-klout related users based on content.  For example, who are the Graphic Designers with the highest klout?  I would be able to search or setup a category feed that aggregates content for me.

As a marketer, I value every single customer and want to every person in the world to be a customer. If I had an unlimited amount of time and money that I could make that happen. But I don’t. That is where data is necessary. I need data about customers to make business decisions on how I spend my limited resources. Is Klout a perfect representation of each individual customer? No. But neither is the data in any CRM system or database in any company. That is why I use multiple systems (including Klout) to build out a well-rounded view of my customers. 

While Klout is “nifty” it’s not really useful and hence after playing with it for a few weeks I quickly lost interest.  I’m not “offended” by the the concept of it, measure whatever you want… good data is good.

However billing that data set as a measurement “influence” is just ridiculous and that I find offensive.  There is nothing in Klout’s algorithms that can measure any action outside the social sphere.  Tell me how you can measure that someone I suggested should go outside right now and enjoy the sunset actually did that?  …you can’t even measure who _clicked_ on an link I shared and went to a site I recommended.

At best Klout measures popularity and reach and while they each have some value, it’s not directly correlated with influence.

I love Klout, but to really find a place of consistent value for consumers (and the marketers who want to reach those consumers) I believe that Klout’s mission should be to use the data it collects to train individuals, small businesses, large corporations to focus and improve the way they communicate via online tools. 

If I am a small business throwing social media marketing ideas against a wall, and I see that as I am doing so my Klout score is rising – cool, I feel like I am making progress.  BUT if I see an attendant rise in sales – WOW, now I know I am making progress. 

If my Klout score becomes a way for me to consistently monitor the effectiveness of my communication it has real, tangible value to me – even if I am the target of personalized marketing as a result. 

To really live up to this however I believe Klout should become the market leader in education in the space, should allow for individuals to set their “influence” goals as a filter as they join Klout so that they are measuring against their goals, not just involved in some global popularity contest, and should allow for tracking metrics that are tied to specific suggestions for improving social media communication. 

If Klout can fill that space I believe it will transform into an invaluable tool.

As long as Facebook is weighted so heavily, those of us who have long boycotted that privacy-eating nightmare are ranked weirdly.  I talk with awesome, highly influential scientists all the time on G+ who are not and never have been on FB and their Klout scores are lower as a result.  When you compensate for those who only use some social media because they’re too busy doing actual things in the real world with much of their time, then I’ll take Klout more seriously.  Right now it’s just a silly little diversion that generally arrives at the startling conclusion that popular people are, in fact, popular.

Hi Joe .. I’m glad you made this post. In fact, I am shocked it’s taken you this long to do it. The fact that so many have become disenchanted with Klout has nothing to do with your hard work or your employees hard work. It is the way you compile information that draws critics. Why not let users know how you go about compiling scores? The changes you made also made many question their involvement with Klout. We are left wondering .. what other decisions that will directly affect scores will you be making next week, next month? I’m still deciding whether or not I want to be involved w/Klout, and I know I’m not alone. That’s the problem Joe, it’s not personal at all. It’s business.

“Invitation from inbox needs to be reply, just for viewing.”^  ^;…

San Pedro?

Thank you for the great article about Klout. What were our chances before
the social networks in telling other people what we know and think. It has been
an incredible change in the freedom of speech since then.

Exactly. Some take this very seriously and are rather up in arms about how it is just another means in which their stats will be sold and yadda, yadda. Believe me, I went on a humor-based cynical rant about the world of social media and advertising when I signed up for Klout, but you know what? I love the social sciences, technology, trying anything new, the opportunity to report on it to friends and free stuff. Klout is a prime place to do all of the above.

Any plans to start respecting people’s privacy by allowing people to delete their profiles/block your crawlers?

Hey Tom – I think you’ll see a lot of interesting things coming from Klout and Klout’s ecosystem of developers. For example, we at Crowdbooster are helping you filter your followers and helping you use Klout scores to prioritize them *if* what you cared about was to focus on interacting with influential people, like you would as a PR person. I’ve also seen Klout come up with ways to help you identify interesting people to follow based on topic, and even the best content shared by those people. These are all interesting use cases of the score for many of us. I am excited about the future, and Klout aren’t the only guys measuring online influence.

Your point with facebook is valid – except that the issue is not privacy. The issue is that Facebook communication is about family and friendship – not influence. Adding Facebook is about helping people like Justin B or users who chatter a lot with their friends. Not true topical influencers. Certainly not John Smith from Des Moines.

Hey Joe – thanks for your post and putting yourself out there. FWIW – I’m in marketing (B2B space was in consumer marketing), and currently classified as a “specialist” via Klout.

I’ve played with Klout – turned on/off my connected networks, monitored how my behavior online affects my score, etc. And I’ve come to the conclusion is that Klout is helpful in measuring ones overall VIRTUAL persona online to an external audience based on your inter/actions in your online networks. 

I’m the guy who is turning the dials to see what happens and observes my network as well as others.

And to me, it all works – yes even with the bugs and upgrades and tuning you guys are doing.

I don’t quite get why so many people are up in arms, offended, over scoring or transparency. It all seems like simple cause/effect to me. Keep up the good work. 

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly
about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible, as you gain
expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more information? It is
extremely helpful for me.