The Official Klout Blog

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Our ongoing mission at Klout is to help everyone understand and be recognized for their influence. The more data we are able to measure, the more accurately we can represent your influence.

We’re excited to announce that starting today, Facebook Pages are integrated into the Klout Score! Facebook Pages are an extremely popular and important platform, where people, brands, and organizations actively engage with their communities.

The engagement volume is significant. For example, a Klout user with a score between 70-80 has an average of 13,000 users talking about their Page. This engagement explains why Facebook Pages have been one of the most highly-requested additions to the Klout Score.

In the chart below, you’ll find the new distribution of Klout Scores for users who have Pages, showing the contribution their Facebook Pages make to their Scores.

Your most influential Page content will begin appearing as moments on your Klout profile very soon. In the meantime, we invite you to be recognized for your Facebook Page influence. Connect your Facebook Page to Klout now by visiting your Connected Networks page in your Settings.

Q&A

How do I connect my Facebook Page to Klout?
Check out this step-by-step guide with screenshots in our Help Center.

How do I connect my brand’s Facebook Page to my brand’s Klout profile?
First, make sure that you are logged into your brand’s Klout account, not your own personal Klout account. Log out of Klout, sign in using your brand’s Twitter account, and then check in the upper-right hand corner to make sure your brand’s icon is there. That’s how you can make sure you are logged into the right account. Once that’s all set, you can follow our step-by-step guide to adding your brand’s Page.

How will adding a Facebook Page impact my Klout Score?
It depends. The mean Score increase for a Klout user with a Facebook Page is about seven points, all else held equal. Remember, other signals of influence from networks like Twitter and Google+ are still affecting your Klout Score and may offset score changes from your Page.

Please note that we only support having one type of Facebook account connected per Klout account: either a personal Facebook account or a Facebook Page. If you add a Facebook Page, it will replace your personal Facebook profile in terms of Klout scoring. You may see a Score drop if you replace an influential personal Facebook profile with a less influential Facebook Page.

What signals of influence from Facebook Pages are included in the Klout Score?
Some of the signals we’ll measure from Facebook Pages include the number of fans and how many people are talking about your Page. If you have connected your Facebook Page to Klout, you can check your Score Summary on your dashboard to see some statistics.

Will Facebook Page content be surfaced as moments on my Klout profile?
Not yet, but soon. Right now, your Page data is being incorporated into your Klout Score and into your Score Summary. Your most influential Page content will be surfaced on your Klout profile in the near future.

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Klout’s vision is to help people understand and be recognized for their influence. I was surprised a few months ago after a meeting with the Microsoft Bing leadership to learn how much our visions overlapped.

Microsoft and Klout both believe that the growth of the social web and the increasing importance of your online identity are fundamentally transforming the Internet, making it even more important to understand people, not just pages. Like Microsoft, Klout is a friend to all social networks. We both want to help everyone discover relevant people regardless of the specific networks on which they’re active. And we believe we’ve only just begun to tap into the knowledge and insights “search through people” will enable, now and into the future.

To build towards that future, I am proud to announce that Microsoft has made a strategic investment in Klout and that we have signed a multi-year agreement where Bing will become one of Klout’s most significant partners.

Starting today, you will notice that Bing is surfacing Klout Scores and influential topics for experts that are listed in the “People Who Know” section of its social sidebar. The Klout Score and topics are a helpful signal for understanding why you should trust recommendations from these experts. By clicking through to those users’ Klout profiles, you can see their best moments and gain additional context and insights into their expertise. It’s the “social resume” at work!

As part of our partnership, Bing will provide additional data to Klout. Search data has long been one of the missing signals in our effort to fully recognize a person’s influence. Just as Wikipedia articles can reflect a person’s real world influence, search results for a person signal accomplishments achieved beyond social networks and serve to influence others. There will be two data points from Bing that will initially be highlighted as part of Klout moments. Experts who appear in Bing’s “People Who Know” section of the sidebar will be recognized on Klout. Influencers who have a Wikipedia account associated with their Klout profile will also be rewarded for the frequency that they are searched on Bing.

Over the next few months, we will include this data in the Klout Score and continue to add signals generated from Bing searches. The coverage of people who have Bing data associated to their Klout account will continue to increase as Klout helps surface more influencers in Bing search.

This is a small step for Bing and Klout towards a very big idea: search through people. You will see a continuous flow of innovation from our joint development team focused on the discovery and recognition of influencers on both Bing and Klout. If you haven’t registered your profile on Klout, now is a great time to start building your influence and making it easier for others to discover your passions and expertise on Bing.

Stay tuned for more updates on our collaboration with Bing and other Microsoft initiatives.

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It’s been about a month since we launched the most significant update to the Klout Score ever. Besides improving accuracy by adding sources like Wikipedia and greatly increasing the signals from every network we measure, this new score enables a level of transparency that has never been seen in the world of influence measurement. Since launching the updated score we have been rolling out an updated site that shows this transparency off through Klout Moments.

Today I am proud to announce that we have retired the old Klout site and everyone now has access to Klout Moments.

We are really proud of this update to Klout; it turned the heads of the press (see Time, Businessweek, PandoDaily) and turned critics into investors (see “Uncrunched: Why I Changed My Mind on Klout”). Since that day we have seen the highest registration and engagement metrics in our history.

This update to both the Klout Score and our site was a full company effort and we all hope you enjoy this release. One of the things we are particularly excited for you to experience is the pleasure of clicking around your friends’ Klout Moments. We’ve found it to be a fun reminder of how interesting, insightful, funny and influential our networks can be. We also built an incredibly robust privacy system that respects the viewing permissions of whatever network you created your moment on (Facebook posts set to friends only are only viewable by those Facebook friends on Klout, for example) and gives you full control over who has access to your moments.

Check out Klout.com now to see your most influential moments, and let us know what you think!

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As you could tell from last week’s announcement about our updated Klout Score and redesigned website, we’ve been hard at work to evolve Klout in every way. We’ve always held the belief that everyone has influence, so we’re constantly on the move to find ways to bring value to all of our users. This means getting Klout influencers early access to exclusive products and experiences from top brands before they are available anywhere else.

This week, Jawbone, maker of JAMBOX—the #1 best-selling wireless speaker—has stepped up in a huge way, letting Klout users experience the newest JAMBOX a full week before anyone else.

You can be the first to build your own custom JAMBOX a week before it’s available to the public. Users can mix and match between 13 grill and nine cap options to create more than 100 design combinations to represent your favorite sports team (Hello 49ers!), alma mater, school, personal style—you get the picture. You can then share your designs with friends and grant them early access to create their own JAMBOX. Check out the landing page here to learn more.

“We’re excited to give Klout users the first peak at our new custom colors for JAMBOX. As a platform, we think Klout is a great way to engage influencers and encourage social sharing, and we can’t wait to see what color combinations are most popular amongst the Klout community,” said Travis Bogard, vice president of product management and strategy at Jawbone.

You might remember exclusive offers from Spotify, Microsoft and Audi that were only available to Klout influencers. Stay tuned – we’ll keep coming at you with more amazingness.

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Social media is evolving every day. In just the past four years, we have seen Facebook grow from 100 million to over 900 million users. We’ve seen Twitter usage increase from 300,000 tweets per day to over 400 million tweets per day. LinkedIn has grown from 20 million to over 175 million users. The movement that grew out of college dorm rooms now has the power and scale to launch new markets and topple governments. And the rate of change is unprecedented in the history of technology and media. Since Klout was founded in 2008, we’ve seen the emergence and rapid growth of new networks, with many introducing powerful shifts in behavior, influence, and the way that ideas are shared.

Measuring all of this is a monumental challenge. Our team of engineers, scientists and hardcore social media users are obsessed with providing every person with the most accurate and transparent view of their influence and the power of their ideas. To accomplish this, we are constantly adapting and evolving our measurement to stay ahead of the social media growth curve.

Today, we’re introducing some of the most significant product updates in Klout’s history. With these updates, we’ve concentrated on helping everyone to gain a clearer, more accurate understanding of how they influence other people through the ideas they share.

Here’s what we’re announcing today:

More Data, More Often
We have increased the number of social media signals we analyze from less than 100 to more than 400. We have also increased the number of data points we analyze on a daily basis from 1 billion to 12 billion. All of this additional data helps us deliver a more accurate Score for everyone on Klout.

Real-World Influence
Our long-term goal is to understand and analyze all the world’s influence, both online and offline. Today, we are entering the early stages of incorporating real-world influence into the Klout Score by integrating Wikipedia. We see a Wikipedia entry as a significant indicator of one’s ability to drive action in the real world. We’ve tested this method over the past several months and the updated Scores of recognized world leaders like Barack Obama and Warren Buffett more accurately reflect their real-world influence. Go here to see examples of how Scores are being calibrated by these new inputs.

Distribution Shift
The social Web is evolving, but one thing that’s not changing is the continued growth we’re tracking. Interaction and participation levels in the networks we measure are growing exponentially. We’ve adjusted the distribution of Klout Scores to better reflect the growth in engagement across the Web.

Moments
Moments is a significant addition to the Klout user experience. This feature displays the content and ideas that have been most influential across all of your networks, all in one place. Moments will also help you see interaction patterns emerge that can help you shape your influence and improve the quality of your ideas. We’ll make moments available to everyone over the next few weeks. You can also check out a preview here.

Shiny New Site Design
We’ve redesigned Klout.com to focus on the content that shapes your influence through each interaction. Our goal is to deliver a cleaner, more authentic representation of the insights and understanding you’ll now be able to get when you come to Klout. Like moments, we’ll initially make the new website design available to a small percentage of users and roll it out to everyone over the next few weeks.

This update marks the next phase of Klout’s evolution into the dynamic, engaging platform of understanding and insight that I envisioned. Our ongoing vision is to help everyone discover and be recognized for their influence. Your ideas are more powerful than you can imagine, and with these updates to Klout, we are taking a step towards helping you understand that influence and better create ideas that shape the world around you.

We know how important the Klout Score is to you. I look forward to hearing your feedback and hope you’ll find these updates to be as useful and awesome as we do.

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Klout team members (or Kloutlaws as we prefer to call ourselves) are a special breed. We are obsessed with empowering everyone to discover and be recognized for their influence and pride ourselves on the passion with which we embark on this mission.

Today I am proud to announce that Emil Michael has joined Klout as our COO and is the newest member of our Board of Directors. Emil is more than overflowing with all the qualities of a Kloutlaw and will be overseeing all business functions of Klout. Emil has an extensive background as an entrepreneur and operator that includes time as Senior Vice President of Field Operations for TellMe Networks, a senior official at the White House, and an investor/advisor in some of the best tech companies in NYC and Silicon Valley.

This hire is incredibly special to me personally. Since I started Klout four years ago with a dream where every person was recognized for the power of their voice online, I’ve been fortunate to be joined by an amazing team. It started with my co-founder, Binh Tran, who focused on technology, and Matt Thomson, who was our first business hire and has basically filled every role possible. Now, with over 40 billion API calls monthly, millions of Klout users and brands like Chevy, Microsoft, Gilt and others recognizing the Klout of their customers, we are making this vision a reality. With the addition of Emil we are poised to take everything we’ve done to the next level.

Please join me in welcoming Emil to Klout with a +K on his Klout profile.

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Just a few weeks ago we launched the first version of Klout for iPhone. Our app gives you instant updates about your online influence, no matter where you are. The response has been really positive and a huge number of our users are now interacting with Klout through their iPhone.

But we know that we’ve only scratched the surface. And we’ve heard from a number of you that there are features from our website that you really miss using on your iPhone.

So today we’re taking another step forward by releasing v1.5 of Klout for iPhone. It’s a big update that includes a number of things that users like you have requested, including:

• Swipe to +K: You can now endorse anyone’s influence by swiping your finger across one of their Topics. It’s as easy as unlocking your iPhone.
• Search: Enter any Twitter handle and quickly find that user’s Klout Score.
• Switching between accounts: We’ve added a “Logout” button that makes it easier to switch between multiple Klout profiles (such as your personal and professional identities).

We have a lot more coming in the very near future, including the ability to connect more of your social networks to your Klout profile using your iPhone.

Please give this new version a try and let us know what you think – there’s a Feedback link right inside the app.

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From the moment we started Klout, we had a vision that your influence would benefit users both on and off of Klout.com. Partners have pulled data from our API since 2008 to offer a wide range of services to influencers, be it room upgrades at the Palms Hotel , targeted match-making through Tawkify or cash back rewards from Capital One based on people’s Klout Scores. Platforms like Salesforce, CoTweet and Hootsuite allow professionals to see Klout Scores in the flow of social media content to offer better service to their customers.

Over time, demand for our influence data has dramatically increased. We now serve about one billion API calls per day – that is 80 times the amount of data we served this time last year! In just the last three months, API calls have risen from 10.5 billion to almost 30 billion per month. Our data-serving traffic has nearly tripled since the end of January, and we now serve over 6,000 partners – that’s up from 2,000 partners one year ago.

Indeed, the future is strong for Klout. But this demand requires a new approach to delivering on that influence graph, so we have bolstered our API to make it more extensible and reliable. In fact, our new Klout for iPhone app is built on the new API.
After a closed testing period, today we are ready to open our API for self-service developer registration. Version 2 of the Klout API offers a number of improvements over version 1:

• Instead of being Twitter-focused, it’s now “Klout-focused;” we offer a service that translates identifiers from Twitter to Klout IDs to facilitate speed and to incorporate influence from other networks in the future.
• The new API is faster, asynchronous and has a new caching system.
• Because it’s based on our internal architecture, we’ll soon release new features to the API. More on this below.

The most significant change will be an oAuth2-based authentication system for Klout users. Among other advantages, this will allow Klout users to give +K to influencers across the Web, off of Klout.com. Reading a great music blog on Tumblr? Give them a +K in Music. Did a particular tweet from Steve Carell get you in stitches? +K him in Comedy. You get the picture. We expect this to be available soon.

You can follow our API’s Twitter account, @KloutAPI, the API blog, or just head over to http://developer.klout.com to sign up for a key and play with our Interactive Documentation. All existing Klout Partners will be required to move to the new API by December 31st, 2012, when the V1 API will be shut down. All new partners must use the V2 API going forward. But fear not, our developer relations team is here to help. We will be posting helpful documentation, language wrappers, and other convenient tools to assist in the transition.

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In February, Klout acquired my startup, Blockboard. The idea was that by joining forces we could quickly bring Klout to mobile phones and expand our understanding of influence in the real world. Since then we’ve been hard at work with our new colleagues and today I’m pleased to announce Klout’s first iPhone app! You can find it in the iTunes App Store here.

Klout for iPhone v1.0 helps you keep track of your influence wherever you go. Want to know your Klout Score without even opening the app? Just look at the Klout icon on your home screen. Your Score is right there, always up-to-date. And when your Score changes or someone gives you +K, we’ll send you a push notification to keep you in the loop.

Inside the app, you’ll find it’s easy to get a snapshot of your influence. You can view your own Klout Score and your influential topics. You can also discover and browse the people who influence you online.

As a bonus, your Klout Score will instantly go up by 10 after you install this app, and Justin Bieber will personally visit your office. (I kid, I kid.)

This was a fast-paced project, going from zero to code-complete in under seven weeks. We’re very happy to be sharing these first efforts with our users. There’s much more to come, including an Android version and the ability to give out +K. Give the app a try and let us know what you think!