The Official Klout Blog

Last night, we had our first San Francisco KloutUp!

It was a great turnout – over 100 people came to the Klout HQ to have a few drinks and hang out with us. We even had a few special guests — Toronto tweeters who were visiting SF courtesy of the Virgin America Perks program like Jo (@clickflickca), Corey (@cellguru), and Guy (@mynameisguygal) – just to name a few.

The room was buzzing with conversation as everyone caught up with old friends and connected with new people. Everyone munched on Popchips and sipped on drinks provided by our sponsors Veev, an acai spirit and delicious St Supery wine. The main attraction at the KloutUp however, was a large monitor where we showed the Klout scores of all the attendees. Those that were brave enough stepped up to the screen and snapped a picture with a huge display of their Klout score.

Photos by Ken Yeung (@thekenyeung)

The KloutUp was a blast and it was great to see people wearing the free tshirts we gave out. We were definitely feeling the Klout love – some influencers even stayed to help us clean up afterwards! We want to thank everyone who came out to meet us. We appreciate your support and we hope to keep in touch with all of you.

If you’re in NYC check out our KloutUp next Tuesday and meet Megan Berry (@meganberry) and Gregarious Narain (gregarious) of Klout. Find plan details here.

If you want to see more of the KloutUp and the awesome people who were there, check out the pictures by Ken Yeung (@thekenyeung) and the roundup below by Xavier Damman.

Two of the Klout Team (myself and @gregarious) recently went up to Toronto (flying Virgin America, of course) to meet everyone  who’s been a part of the Virgin America Perks program. We put together a KloutUp, went to the official Virgin America Toronto launch party and met with a variety of Toronto tweeters during the day. Here’s the recap.

The KloutUp: Putting real faces to twitter handles
Monday night, June 28th, we had a KloutUp in the Gladstone hotel where we invited any Toronto tweeters (whether or not they were part of our promotion) to come hang out and have some free drinks. It was great to interact with the Toronto Twitter community more than 140 characters at a time. The KloutUp actually ended up going hours beyond when it was supposed to end and a big group went out to dinner afterwards to continue the conversations. Check out the pics.

Virgin America Launch Party
We went to the official Virgin America launch party on Tuesday, June 29th. We had a great time (some of us even got pictures with Branson himself) and got to see even more of the Tweeters who were in our program. We wished we could have invited everyone, but the Virgin America party had limited capacity. Check out the pics.

A Learning Experience
Greg and I went to Toronto to see first-hand what this campaign was like on the ground. We got a chance to talk to a lot of people who were selected and also others who were not. It gave us a great chance to learn where people had questions and how we can make what we’re doing clearer for future perks.

For those we didn’t get a chance to talk to, here’s a quick explanation on one of the bigger questions – why some people got invited and others didn’t. For this program, as is true with any, we’re looking to target a certain set of influencers that are right for the brand and the campaign. We have topical scores for everyone that we don’t show on Klout.com. This enables us to select people who are the most influential in a given topic, but may not necessarily be as influential overall. These topical scores combined with Klout Score and other factors such as location are used to produce a short list of who is eligible for a campaign. It’s possible that someone very influential could not be a right match for this campaign and also possible that someone with a lower overall influence level would be influential in the all right areas and get chosen. You can also read a previous post we had on this subject.

Thanks and see you soon!

I need to thank so many people in Toronto for being awesome hosts and showing us a great time. Toronto is growing to become a hub for startups and social media and we look forward to keeping in touch with everyone we met there. Luckily, many of those who got Virgin America flights are choosing to come to SF, so we’ll get to see them again soon.

Photos by @thekenyeung