In 2010, we launched Klout Perks with the goal of recognizing and rewarding our users for their influence. After three very busy years, we are proud to have grown into the world’s largest, most successful influencer program with more than one million Perks claimed. The one millionth Perk was particularly fun as the influencer received a limited edition vinyl of Snoop Lion’s Reincarnated album.

We take pride that Klout Perks rewards everyday influencers and has connected them with more than 400 brands. Companies like GM, Red Bull, American Express, Sony and Nike value their most passionate fans, and have reached them through Klout, and we thank them for helping us reward influencers for being themselves.

Despite our success, we are dedicated to the continuous improvement of Klout. We have 200,000 businesses and millions of consumers registered on our site, and we’re bringing more of them together with our recent launch of Klout for Business. This platform improves our ability to measure influence, leverages that data to connect influencers with the brands they love and measures the impact of influencer campaigns.

We are excited for the future of influencer marketing and Klout’s role in shaping it, but before we continue to charge forward let’s take a trip down memory lane by taking a quick look at our Perk history.

I have always been a firm believer that everyone has Klout. Each one of us can have an impact on the decisions made by others, just by sharing our opinions and insights on the topics we are passionate about. As a company, we have done a great job of measuring this. The Klout Score has become an industry standard and is relied upon by millions of people to benchmark the impact they are having on the world.

To achieve our mission of helping everyone realize their influence, I believe it is our duty as a company to do more than just measure influence. Today I am proud to announce the preview release of Klout Experts.

With Klout Experts, our goal is to enable every person to share their passions and expertise with the world. Klout Experts will create a path to not only increasing your Klout Score, but also to helping others by sharing your insights and opinions.

In the real world, when I have questions about specific subjects, there are certain people I always go to because they know so much about them. Every time I want to know anything about cars I call my co-founder Binh. When I want to know about ski equipment I message my friend Dave. Oftentimes, however, there are questions I have where the expertise to answer them lives beyond my personal network.

This is where Klout Experts will come to the rescue. The advice and answers you share through Klout will reach others at their exact time of need. Through our partnerships with Bing and others, people searching for help will be able to find your responses, then look at your Klout Moments to understand your perspective, and even connect with you on social media for follow-up conversations.

Here is how it works:

During this preview period, we’ve made Klout Experts available to a small percentage of our users. If you’re one of the influencers we’ve tapped for early access, when you come to Klout you will have the opportunity to share your insights to questions about the topics you are most interested in. You can also request early access to Klout Experts by signing up for the waitlist.

For example, a person building their influence in photography might be asked, “What’s the best digital SLR for beginners?” Someone who is an expert about fitness might answer, “What’s a great exercise routine for someone with bad knees?” We are focused on practical advice that leverages the taste and wisdom we all have about something.

Starting today, an initial set of Klout Experts answers are being delivered on Bing. Influencers who take part in Klout Experts will have the opportunity to have their answers seen by millions of people using Bing search every day.

Influence is created by the expertise we have, the way we share it and the impact it has on others. Today we are taking a big step by moving from just measuring that influence to actually helping every person maximize the impact they have on the world.

Klout has become the standard for finding the people who influence the opinions and actions of others—the people who know what they’re talking about. Klout Experts moves us closer to our vision of helping every person realize their influence. We’re excited to see how you share what you know with the world.

At Klout, we know that understanding your influence through the Klout Score, Moments and analysis is just one step toward being recognized for your influence. We launched our Klout Perks program to recognize influencers with amazing products and experiences, and have partnered with major brands like Sony, Nike, Microsoft, Disney, Audi, Gilt and many others in an attempt to keep upping ourselves. Influencers clearly like this recognition – we delivered our one millionth Perk last week!

We think we’ve found another way to top ourselves…

Today we’re announcing a partnership with American Airlines that gives Klout users access to nearly 40 worldwide lounge locations including San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, London and many more. Starting today, if you have a Klout Score of 55 or higher, you can gain access to the Admirals Club by going to www.aa.com/klout. You do not have to be an American Airlines passenger to be eligible for this Perk.

This is only the beginning of the momentum we’re seeing with businesses and brands who recognize the power of Klout to further reward their best customers, and introduce themselves to a great breed of new customers.

Go to www.aa.com/klout to get your Klout treatment!

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.”

[AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez]
See our list of Most Influential Baseball Teams

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.”

Ray Lewis uses simplicity to drive a high amount of engagement from his Twitter followers.

Instagram is Paul Bissonnette’s favorite social media channel to connect with his fans online. “I like how images speak for themselves. You don’t have to comment. It’s easier to get your joke across.” Our Instagram Score integration bumped him from a Klout Score of 82.8 to 84.7.

How do you use social media to connect with your network in a unique way? Let us know in the comments below.

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!

Klout would be nothing without data. So we spend a lot of time and energy working with partners to bring in quality information from the networks that are being used most by people all over the world.

Today we’re taking a huge step in the quality data direction with Bing and Instagram.

Bing becomes a Klout network

Starting today, you can connect your Klout account to Bing. This is one of the early and natural fruits of the partnership we announced with Bing last Fall, and means that Bing search data will start becoming integrated into Klout’s algorithm. Search results will eventually factor into each user’s Klout Score.

To connect your Klout account to Bing, go here.

We’re also very excited about some additional ways that Bing is surfacing Klout information. Bing is now displaying Klout Scores for high-profile professionals and socially active influencers right in Bing search results. At a glance, it is easy to see an influencer’s Klout Score and expertise without having to click any further.

Instagram in your Score

Instagram generates some of social media’s most beautiful and engaging content, and is one of the most highly-requested networks by Klout users. Starting this week, all your Instagram activities will be part of your Klout Score, and your most popular photos will appear in your Klout Moments. We are rolling out this integration by phases so some of our users might have seen their score increase due to Instagram before this post. If you haven’t yet connected Instagram to your account, go here and do it today.

For those who are really curious and math savvy, we posted some stats and analysis on our engineering blog to show how this change will impact those who’ve connected Instagram with Klout.

We are hard at work to add more relevant data to Klout, so stay tuned for more updates!

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.

You can get more information or sign up for early access to the complimentary insights at our spiffy new Klout for Business portal.

Early feedback from beta users been very encouraging, so I can’t wait to hear what you think!

Klout believes everyone has influence, and influence comes with responsibility. Klout for Good aims to help you leverage your influence to make the world a better place for everyone.

March 8th is International Women’s Day and it’s a time to celebrate the past, present and future of women. We’ve partnered with Kiva this month to not just celebrate, but continue the momentum of progress made by women every day.

Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. In places around the world where there are no traditional financial institutions, Kiva is there to provide small loans to local entrepreneurial people. This month, you can empower women with small loans through Kiva. When you lend to a woman, she invests in her community and her family.

Visit Kiva’s Klout for Good page where you can learn how to support a woman and spread the word about this great initiative for International Women’s Day.

At Klout, we love having the opportunity to connect influential people with exclusive experiences or products. Rewarding people for simply being themselves online and engaging their audience with their opinions is an awesome job to have.

Our latest Klout Perk comes from Sony Electronics. They are also big fans of getting cool products into passionate people’s hands. We have teamed up with Sony to reward 5,000 active lifestyle influencers with the Sony Walkman W. The Sony Walkman W is for fitness fans—water resistant, cord-free and only takes three minutes to charge. In addition to that, the top five influencers who create the most engaging content will be upgraded to the brand-new, waterproof version.

We’re always adding new Perks and the best way to get selected is to register for Klout today and start creating engaging, authentic content. Keep your eyes peeled for when we find the perfect Perk for you!