At Klout, we’ve always believed that you have the ability to influence the world. TIME Magazine recently unveiled its annual list of the ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’, and some of Klout’s top influencers made the list.
We were especially interested in understanding the role that social media played in these influencers lives, so we ranked the influencers with a social media presence. We discovered that the majority of the people included on the list are among the top 5% of our very own top influencers at Klout. These top influencers range from inventor Elon Musk (Klout Score: 85) to Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg (Klout Score: 85) to President Barack Obama, who ranks first on our list (Klout Score: 99).
Social media is becoming an increasingly important platform to reach a global audience. This year, for the first time, TIME highlighted which candidates’ poll pages were getting the most buzz on social media. Some of the nominee pages with the most social buzz included Bashar Assad, Mohamed Morsi, Arvind Kejriwal, and Paula Deen.
Our goal is to help people better understand their online influence, and we are excited to see several of our top influencers recognized in TIME’s list.
Who do you think should have been included on TIME’s list? Comment below and let us know your thoughts.
What do comedy and sportsmanship have in common? A few athletes profiled on ESPN love using social media to show their wit.
In January, we announced our collaboration with ESPN to highlight athletes with a surprising amount of social media influence. Since then, we’ve done four profiles with athletes who have serious Klout.
How are these athletes using social media in a unique way?
The newest ESPN profile was released today. In it, Brandon McCarthy shares that he values quality interaction with his followers on Twitter, “The power of the retweet just boggles my mind.”
Social media is a direct line of communication between Jamal Crawford and his fans. “[I use social media] to interact with fans who I’d never meet otherwise.”
It’s well known that Orange, one of the world’s largest telecommunications brands, is ahead of the curve when it comes to recognizing and supporting its millions of customers. Now, in the ramp-up to the launch of its much-anticipated 4G network in France, Orange is becoming Klout’s first major partner in Europe.
As always, our goal is to help influence get recognized everywhere. Last week we moved further toward that goal on the web by adding Bing and Instagram to the Klout Score, and today we’re taking a huge step forward geographically by rewarding influencers in more parts of the world.
During our exclusive, long-term agreement, we’ll work closely with Orange to craft experiences especially for the French market. Along the way, we look forward to working with a rock-star brand that clearly understands social media [Klout Score 81!] and the future of influencer recognition.
We can’t wait to spend more time getting to know influencers in France, and spreading our wings in more parts of the world in the near future!
For nearly five years, Klout has been building algorithmic models that analyze billions of data points on a daily basis to understand the world’s influence. We’ve always taken a very user-centric approach, with the ultimate goal of helping everyone get a deeper grasp of their personal influence. This is something we try to get better at every day.
At the same time, we have engaged with hundreds of brands to offer influencers premium products and experiences through Klout Perks, a business model that Joe and I always considered the most user-first way to make money. And it’s grown! With just a small and scrappy sales and account management team, and a lean product and engineering team, we’ve still managed to triple the Perks business annually.
Today, we are taking the data-driven intelligence we’ve developed over the years to begin a more measured march toward Klout for Business. Initially, Klout for Business will give businesses a complimentary set of analytics with pointed insights into how and where influencers are engaging with their brands in social media.
Businesses will be able to look at an easy-to-read dashboard that tells you, at-a-glance, whether you are engaging your influencers on the networks where they are most actively exerting their influence and on which Klout Score ranges you could stand to amp up your efforts. Most importantly, Klout can tell you which topics your audience influences others on, helping you maximize your content efforts to drive consideration for your brand.
Network Optimization
Top Topics
Klout reaches over 70% of today’s digital influencers and attracts new users every day. Klout for Business will continue to develop into a portal where we intend to help brands and agencies streamline their understanding, management and engagement with this important segment of the digital population. Our goal is to help brands and influencers build relationships that transcend the current advertiser-consumer dynamic.
SxSW is known for hosting the most exciting product launches and valuable networking events. We’re excited to be in Austin for SxSW Interactive and looking forward to meeting our Klout influencers. Whether you’ll be in town for panels, meetings or just to enjoy yourself — be sure to say hello to Team Klout!
The data is out there. It’s accessible, and you can consume it, visualize it, and act on it, many times for free. It’s big data for everyone. [M]ake data-driven personal decisions about what to watch, what to buy, and be ahead of the trends.
Reality TV shows, specifically competition-based series, just make for good drama. Well, mostly. Piloting those shows are the big personality hosts, such as Ryan Seacrest, Jeff Probst and Heidi Klum. These are people with some serious Klout. It raises the question, which reality TV show host has the highest Klout Score?
You can see the complete rankings in our newest Klout Pulse list, Reality TV Show Hosts.
We put the hosts of the hottest reality series in a list together to compete for our top spot, the way contestants on their shows do every day.
If Klout Pulse is new to you, we’d love to hear your suggestions for lists. Take a look at our other lists, and let us know which list you’d like to see created by tweeting at us with #KloutPulse.
We are super excited to announce that we have teamed up with Cirque du Soleil to invite 50 Klout users and their guests to #EVOKE13, a special SxSW Interactive event at Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater on March 12. #EVOKE13 features a specially-created act by Cirque du Soleil exclusively for SxSW, showcasing acrobats, dancers and characters from Cirque du Soleil resident shows in Las Vegas and Orlando. It’s bound to be one of the hottest shows in Austin.
Starting today, Klout users with the Klout for iPhone app who are at SxSW Interactive can opt-in to become eligible for the Klout Perk, which offers special seating in the VIP mezzanine area of ACL Live, complimentary drinks and a VIP swag bag.
Also included is panel discussion hosted by colorful Nerdist Industries Founder Chris Hardwick, along with internet personality and Cos Player Meg Turney. The Divine Fits, who released one of 2012′s most critically acclaimed albums, A Thing Called Divine Fits (Merge), will also perform a set. The night will top off with a set from GRAMMY nominated producer, DJ Sam Spiegel.
SxSW attendees can redeem this Perk in three easy steps:
1. Opt-in: you will receive a notification when you download the app, then just hit “OK”
2. Go to SxSW and walk around: you will be automatically entered when we pick up your location
3. Redeem if you win: if you receive a notification that you have won the Perk, bring your phone to the event and show your Klout Card from the Passbook on your iPhone
Voila!
To become eligible for the VIP Klout Perk, download the Klout for iPhone app. When you are notified of your eligibility for VIP offers from Klout, click “OK” and you will receive confirmation of your selection. Once in Austin for SxSW Interactive, Klout will send offers to eligible influencers who have opt-ed in to the VIP program. Fifty influencers will then be notified that they have received the Perk. For entry, just show your Klout Card from the Passbook on your iPhone.
Doors will open at 7 p.m. with the event starting at 8 p.m., and all SxSW attendees are welcome. If you’re at SxSW Interactive and looking for things to do in Austin, make sure you have your Klout iPhone app downloaded. It might be your ticket to this amazing event.
Last week, Klout hosted Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner‘s 34th event. Girl geeks from all over Silicon Valley gathered at our headquarters to talk about their colorful career paths and how they arrived at the career they have today.
Here’s what we talked about:
Kloutlaws Ride Together
Katelin Holloway, our Director of People & Culture, gave attendees an inside look at our culture at Klout and what it means to be a Klout employee. “We identify ourselves as Kloutlaws first, everything else simply enhances our experience here. We are women, parents, athletes, mathletes, engineers, and interns, yes. But when we’re at Klout, we’re a family.”
It’s important to reach out to your influencers, even the ones who seem out of your reach Sahana Ullagaddi, our Community Manager, spoke about the importance of reaching out to people who influence and inspire you, especially when they may seem out of your reach. We’re building a platform at Klout to help users discover interesting and influential people, but we aren’t able to facilitate that introduction for you. The next step is reaching out.
Focus on authentic curiosity
It seems intuitive to connect with people who you have several things in common with, but it’s also important to consider the people who you have nothing in common with. Try connecting with people with diverse topics of influence or with people where it may not be so obvious exactly how to connect the dots. This is often where the magic happens. Sahana shared from her personal experience that the less expectation she had for her mentorship relationships, the more she was invested in learning from them.
Highlights from our tech panel “Stay uncomfortable. As soon as you’re comfortable, you’re not learning.” – Yize Li, Software Engineer
“Connect with as many networks as you can and engage as much as you can and your score will soar!” – Michelle Riles, Lead User Operations Associate
“Don’t be afraid to pursue change and try something new. What’s really important is to try to challenge yourself.” – Daisy Liu, Software Engineer
“We can improve the environment for women in technology by continuing to attend events like these.” – Melanie Goetz, Research Engineer
“I’ve had a unique experience, having had worked at Klout as an intern before joining the company full-time. I decided to come back because I loved our team.” – Christine Nguyen, Software Engineer
We’d like to thank everyone who attended our Girl Geek Dinner. It was incredibly rewarding for us to be able to meet so many of you in person. If you weren’t able to make it to this event (or if you did attend and left wanting more), we plan on hosting a series of Kloutups in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled!
It’s true. In spring 2010, a couple of guys from Klout went to Stanford and posted a sign inviting recruits to “Bro Down and Crush Code“. Almost three years later, this poster continues to show up as an example for articles about the sexist undertones of some startup engineering culture.
That was then
At the time, Klout was small and hungry. We were 12 men and 3 women: my co-founder, some engineers, a salesperson, a marketing manager, and myself. The idea that everyone has influence was (and is) our passion. And we were desperate for more people, so we all recruited.
Our intention was never to dismiss or alienate female engineers. The poster was meant to be seen in the context of meeting a Klout team member who clearly wasn’t a “Bro” at that recruiting event. “Bro Down and Crush Code” was a misguided attempt to show everyone that we were down-to-earth, funny and relatable people.
Looking back, it’s clear how uninviting and offensive that language is to many people, not just women. It’s not something we’re proud of. We are sorry about the message that was conveyed then. We don’t support or condone sexism at Klout, and our culture today has matured from what it was then.
This is now
We’ve come a long way since that spring. Today, we are over 65 Kloutlaws, nearly 30% percent of whom are women, all of whom are enthusiastic contributors to the culture we are building together. We reach out to the community by regularly hosting tech meetups, including women-focused groups like Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners, PyLadies and Women Who Code.
Our values are inclusive of everyone on our team:
Be Bold.
Punch Mediocrity in the Face.
Deliver Value with Integrity.
Get There Faster.
Kloutlaws Ride Together.
These values are our code, not a “bro’s” code. They are what we cultivate here at Klout and embody what we look for in new team members. We have made some mistakes on the way to now, but we’ve learned from them. And we will continue to work hard to provide an environment that is welcoming to everyone.
Klout had a big 2012, including surviving the apocalypse. We also measured billions—BILLIONS—of pieces of data to help you understand and be recognized for your influence. But who out there had the best 2012? We popped open the Klout archive to find out what people, products, companies and cities owned the web…
