To keep driving toward our mission of unlocking every user’s influence, we need to make Klout useful and accessible wherever they are – whether they’re at home or on the go. Blockboard has built an amazing local-mobile app that connects neighbors to build stronger communities through technology. You may have seen it featured in Techcrunch or AllThingsD. This simple, well-designed tool gives people a way to communicate with their neighbors about everything from local news and tips to lost pets and broken streetlights.

With their experience, Blockboard brings an awareness of how social media can be meaningfully woven into the fabric of a local community, as well as a killer mobile app development team. Integrating the Blockboard team, technology and expertise is a significant investment into enriching the local and mobile experience for our passionate users, and will be an incredible boost for all of us.

Blockboard’s entire staff is joining Klout, and we can’t wait to get started!

Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Beth Kanter has worked in the nonprofit sector for 32 years and has been a Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation since 2009. She has worked with nonprofit networks and has trained thousands of nonprofit organizations in all areas around the world on using technology for socially-driven impact. Beth is the author of Beth’s Blog and co-author of the book, The Networked Nonprofit, She is also getting ready to publish her second book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” with co-author KD Paine this year.

1.How did you get started in social media?

I started my blog in 2003 as a method to keep my trainer’s notes – not anything special. At the time, I was also a bridge blogger for Global Voices working with Cambodia Bloggers. In 2007, I was the first person to use Twitter for fundraising – I raised money to sponsor a blogger conference in Cambodia. My blog was a way to document what I was learning and my mistakes to avoid making them again. People started commenting and telling me how useful it was. Today, I have a huge readership.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?

Nonprofits are at different levels of embracing social media. There is a segment of early adopters that are getting amazing results like Charity: Water and Momsrising. More and more nonprofits are starting to incorporate social media, but there are challenges. Many nonprofits don’t have a lot of resources in terms of staff and time, so it is hard to invest the time needed for an in-depth presence/strategy. Also, for some organizations, there are cultural issues in the way they work. Being transparent, the participatory nature of social media raise a lot of concerns. With that said, many nonprofits are overcoming those issues and seeing results.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?

I’m influenced by great thinkers and great work and innovative ideas. Right now, I’m very influenced by Robin Good who is the best content curator on the planet! I am also very interested in Howard Rheingold’s work.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?

Follow your passion and be yourself, that’s how I got to where I am. In 2005, I was a bridge blogger for Cambodia for Global Voices. I was connecting with Cambodian bloggers because I was passionate about Cambodia (my 2 kids are adopted from there). Then in 2007, bloggers invited me to keynote their first conference, but they didn’t have resources to get me there. So, I took to my blog and embraced fundraising with Twitter and other tools. So, my passion is for learning and doing good in the world – and social media has helped me combine those qualities.

If anything, I would say the reason I am where I am in addition to following my passion and being myself is because I developed relationships first – and reached out to people to find out how I can be helpful – and not with any eye for getting something in return. I make it a habit never to have my first connection with someone be an ask for them to do something for me.

Connect with Beth on Twitter at @Kanter

Today is National Wear Red Day and Klout has teamed up with the American Heart Association to raise awareness for heart disease. Be one of the first to see the Director’s Cut of “Just a Little Heart Attack,” a short film directed by Emmy-nominated Elizabeth Banks. The film is inspired by real-life stories of women affected by heart disease.

The first 5000 influencers to opt-in will receive a free Red Dress lapel pin!

Use your Klout for good and join us in the #GoRed movement today. Visit GoRedForWomen.org to learn more and spread the word!

How do you use your Klout for good?

This Sunday the New England Patriots will face the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI. Whether you’re in it to watch commercials, sweat over Ron Gronkowski’s injury, check out Madonna’s half-time show, or worship Eli Manning’s right arm, the Super Bowl has something for you.

This year could be the most social Super Bowl yet as fans everywhere collectively cry, argue, jeer, rejoice and more on social media using whatever gadgets they have on hand. To help you get the most out of your social bowl experience, we’ve found the people you should be tuning into on Twitter. With that, we present to you the Super Bowl XLVI Influence All-Stars that include NFL analysts, the top influencers on the #Superbowl, and of course, players from the Giants and Patriots teams.

On a more humorous note, Lord Voldemort, the parody of the infamous villain from the Harry Potter series, made an ominous prediction that spread through the Twittersphere like wildfire. The Dark Lord wrote:

Vinny Guadagnino, reality star from the Jersey Shore, made waves simply by expressing some honest New York Giants fan love:

Last but not least, Rob Gronkowski, tight end for the New England Patriots, sent many people ROFLing when he tweeted as his brother Chris Gronkowski, fullback for the Indianapolis Colts.

We’d like to thank our friends at @TweetStarGame for their help putting together the top Super Bowl players. They’ve also made a sweet Super Bowl page that will help you connect with all the players from both teams this weekend. Check it out!

Will you be watching the Super Bowl? What are you looking forward to seeing? Which team are you rooting for?

#KloutChat is a regular event on the first Wednesday of every month.

This month’s KloutChat is tomorrow afternoon! We will be discussing networks integrated into Klout.

#KloutChat

Wednesday, February 1st at 3PM PST / 6PM EST

Join us on Stanzr at stanzr.com/kloutchat

Tomorrow’s chat will take place on Stanzr! It’s a great new way to organize chats and also allows you to join whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. All you have to do is go to http://stanzr.com/kloutchat at 3PM PT, sign in on the upper left and join the conversation. You can also check it out now to see the questions we have planned for the chat.

We’re looking forward to a great conversation! Remember, if your question is specific to your account it’s best to go to support.klout.com and get it answered there. Thanks!

Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Tom H. C. Anderson is managing partner of research consultancy and text analytics firm Anderson Analytics (OdinText). A pioneer in text mining, he is an award winning blogger and frequent speaker at voice of customer industry events. Tom manages one of the largest discussion groups on LinkedIn related to ‘Next Gen’ market research and has almost 50,000 followers on Twitter.

1.How did you get started in social media?

While I’ve always believed in the power of networking, my original reason for blogging and tweeting was solely to better understand online sentiment from the perspective of the very consumers our clients were asking us to analyze. I really had no idea of the opportunities it would eventually lead to. It turns out that when you study what other brands and online influencers do it’s hard not to get kind of good at it yourself.

2. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?

I think influence means different things to different people. Initially bloggers were credited with an undue level of influence. As the social web has matured I think everyone is contributing and shaping products, services and brands via their networks.

However certain people are definitely more influential in specific areas than others. When I first started using Twitter for Instance, Guy Kawasaki @GuyKawasaki was a huge inspiration in how I started using Twitter. I was also impressed by how approachable he was, and I reached out to him on several occasions for advice.

These days I’m influenced by hundreds of colleagues within my network on a daily basis as they share their own thoughts and experiences as well as relevant articles, many from sources I would not have been likely to come across myself.

3. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?

Interestingly my advice to someone starting out is really the same whether they are an individual or larger brand. Pick one or two examples you admire and look at what they are doing. When you first start out you’re not going to have a large following, just a small group of people who already know you. If you over think it and worry too much about the content initially chances are you’ll never get much out there. Choose one or two channels that are easiest for you whether it’s a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and start there. Don’t overthink it initially and allow yourself to make some mistakes, you’ll find the social web is rather forgiving if intentions are pure.

As you get more comfortable sharing a lot more ideas and opportunities will arise. This is when you may want to fine tune your strategy. Online strategy by the way is something that necessarily should evolve over time as your options and experience change.

I find online influence, even if it’s a personal brand is a lot like formal marketing. It’s about quality content (honesty), frequency and reach. That’s one of the great things about what Klout is doing, it takes into account the fact that YouTube, LinkedIn, facebook etc. are really concentric circles of influence. Those that understand this can relatively easily increase both their reach and frequency and eventually their overall influence.

But you should never forget that listening is at least as important as talking when it comes to online influence.

Connect with Tom on Twitter at @TomHCAnderson

We’re happy to announce that we’re helping Airbnb celebrate their UK launch with a Klout Perk! Airbnb is offering 20,000 influencers in the UK a chance to get away with £50 off. Stay at a studio in Spain for the weekend or relax at a villa in Tuscany for a week. With over 100,000 holiday rentals in over 19,000 cities, Airbnb has something for you.

Airbnb has seen incredible international growth and is rising to meet the global demand by opening several new offices in Europe. Even if you can’t get away, you can still join the celebration by attending the opening of Airbnb’s London office on February 2nd, 2012.

Klout Perks is making major strides on the international stage. We’re very excited about launching our first major UK Perk and we look forward to bringing more exclusive experiences and products to our Klout users around the world.

Where are you from? What Klout Perks would you like to see?

Update: If you are eligible for this Perk and see “You are not eligible,” please email us at help@klout.com and put “Airbnb Perk” in the subject. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Everyone makes lists. Whether it’s to keep track of your daily to-dos or remember what groceries to buy, lists keep us organized and efficient. We even use lists to motivate us to live it up and accomplish our goals before we kick the proverbial bucket. But what about Klout Lists? Klout lists are a great way to discover and interact with people in your influence network. Here are 3 ways Klout lists can help you:

1. Interact with the people you care about. We have lots of connections in the social media space, but sometimes you just want to check up on your closest friends. Are you looking to connect with your old college buddies? You might create a list called “UC Berkeley” so you can easily filter your 10 friends you spent those late nights studying in the stacks with to give them +K in “Berkeley” during the Big Game (Go Bears!).

2. Discover new users and grow your network. Klout makes it easier to connect with new people on social media by helping you find influencers in your areas of interest. For example, you can find video game influencers to talk about the latest game releases or tips using our topic pages. Then create a “Gamers” list so you can remember to check out those users on Twitter, explore influencers in their network, or drop in to give a quick +K in Nintendo. You can even give kudos to people who have impacted you lately by sharing Klout lists. For example, Matt Hurst shared a Klout list of journalists on Twitter for #FollowFriday. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #ff or #FollowFriday!

For #FollowFriday, check out my list of journos on Twitter, like @Learmonth, @Alexia, @lizgannes, and @film_girl! #FF klout.com/MattHurst/list…

— Matthew Hurst (@MattHurst) January 20, 2012

3. See how you compare with your peers. You can learn how to use social media more effectively by watching what your friends are doing. Maybe your boss asks you to create a Klout competition to get your team to be more active in social media. Create a “Klout Krushers” list to easily track participants and it will automatically be ranked by Klout Score. Who knows? Maybe the first employee who raises their Klout score by 20 points gets an awesome vacation to Hawaii. Oh wait, it looks like Bob is currently in the lead…

Do you use Klout lists? What do you use them for?

With over 3,500 partners and Klout integrations out there, it’d be impossible to catalog all of the innovative uses of Klout data across the Internet, let alone all of the fun ones. We’re at a very interesting time in the API space: there’s an amazing amount of data and services out there, and the software development and startup communities are taking notice. While not exactly a new trend, hackathons have been evolving over the last year and a half. Rather than just being a one-off “hack” event, legitimate companies are launching based on the vision of founders and developers at events like AngelHack and StartupWeekend.

This quarter we plan to highlight the cool integrations we see from events like these, as well as more established companies doing something cool. So without further ado:

BitGym's Tron Game

AngelHack was held back in December. An extremely impressive event, had a lot of promise in its format and what it was offering to developers, investors, and partners alike. While the Klout Prize went to HireFluence, BitGym was among the winners for the overall event, with their Tron-influenced game that utilized Klout alongside their fitness game platform. Klout is used to determine the color of your lightcycle trail, as well as the size of your avatar. It’s a clever usage. I really look forward to AngelHack 2.0, being held on March 3rd. Video: BitGym at AngelHack 2011

MarketMeSuite

MarketMeSuite is a staunch supporter of influence metrics and Klout. With their upcoming new release, they’ve reinvented their product as an Inbox for social media, taking the mail management metaphor to a satisfying conclusion: you have multicolored flags you can flag tweets, FB posts, and LinkedIn data with. Content is presented as messages. A user’s Klout score is displayed on a user’s profile when looking at a message.

In the coming weeks and months we’re preparing for a number of new developer events, like Social Media Week, MusicHackDay, AngelHack 2.0, and, of course, SXSW.

What are some of your favorite Klout integrations? What would you like to see?

Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: John is a creative thinker who has achieved significant accomplishments in science, medicine, marketing, and the creative arts. He has been published in the American Heart Association and The American Journal of Physiology and has lectured at Harvard Medical School and The Fashion Institute of Technology. John blogs at http://www.johnnosta.com/ and is an Executive Vice President at Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide

1. How did you get started in social media?

My involvement in social media was a very deliberate choice on my part. As a Chief Creative Officer for a large advertising agency, the digital writing was on the wall and it was essential that I embraced these changes. There were two key drivers. First off, it allowed my competence to grow and become more conversant in new media. Additionally, my involvement gave me a “stronger voice” in the advertising community and resulted in a direct increase in my value in the marketplace. The second driver was the business itself. My clients all were asking about web sites, Twitter, smart phones and alike and I felt that my responses were somewhat removed from the reality of the media–my replies were often canned and not based on direct experience. It became obvious to me that I needed to walk the walk and tweet the tweet. Finally, healthcare was a dynamic and growing part of our economy and business. It was a perfect market where ground-breaking innovations could provide powerful interactions and tools to save lives!

2. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?

Influence, for me, is the unspoken volume of your communication. And by volume, I mean the “intellectual loudness”. It’s the respect that you’ve earned by providing great content and value over time. And that’s important because the perception of WHO you are can be as important as WHAT you say. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there…is analogous to a brilliant blog post or tweet that no one reads!

I’m influenced by a lot of people and engagement peaks my interest right away. People who retweet or comment on my posts / blogs always get my undivided attention. It might spark a relationship or just fade, but you have to “be there” and “be social”. I’m also greatly influenced by “thought-leaders” in various areas. These are the big thinkers and have the established equity that draws me in. And the secret here is that I don’t limit these personal influencers to a specific topic or category. I get great ideas from physics, art and news—all applied to my area of healthcare communications. The real magic for me is when I make a connection with a thought-leader and build a new relationship. And marketing tells us that the most powerful influencer is one in your specific social network. That’s certainly true for me! Today, I have a robust relationship with physicians, patients, scientists, creative thinkers to names a few. And this makes me a much more informed healthcare marketer.

3. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?

Taking your online presence to the next level is all about building your own personal brand! And branding is something we actually do every day. From the clothes we wear to the words we voice–it all builds a personality that we project into the world. In traditional brand-building, typography is sometimes referred to as the “voice of the brand”. The type face becomes the deep and credible voice of a news reporter or the light and airy tone of a small child. Each word strikes a creative cord that defines us. After all, different people can utter the exact phrase yet articulate completely different messages! Now today, we see the emergence of the e-brand–an electronic personality that establishes you (and your brand) in the e-world…and by extension, the real world (if there really is any difference!). Twitter is your speaking voice, in real-time and broken up in short conversations. It’s not your college essay, it’s not your carefully worded press-release, it’s your short burst of personality.

Connect with John on Twitter at @JohnNosta