If you think social media is here to stay, then you probably should understand Klout. No, my spell check has not gone haywire. Klout, a San Francisco-based company started in 2008, helps measure your online influence. It does this by aggregating data from your social networks and then issuing a score ranging from 1 to 100 that is supposed to accurately reflect your influence throughout the Internet.
Klout has been criticized by many for its methodology in deriving user scores, as well as its accuracy in reflecting real-world social influence (for example, teen pop star Justin Bieber has a higher Klout score than President Obama). These criticisms, though perhaps valid, miss the larger objective of Klout, which is to curate, classify, and ultimately monetize online influence.
HOW IS KLOUT MEASURED?
Klout recently updated its algorithm to measure more than 400 signals each day from seven social networks. These signals include things like how often a person's tweets are replied to or how many times his or her content is "Liked" on Facebook.
Taken straight from Klout's website, here are some of the top measurement signals, sorted by network (skip this section if you still don't get why Klout matters):
- Mentions: A mention of your name in a post indicates an effort to engage with you directly.
- Likes: The simplest action that shows engagement with the content you create.
- Comments: As a reaction to content you share, comments also reflect direct engagement by your network.
- Subscribers: Subscriber count is a more persistent measure of influence that grows over time.
- Wall Posts: Posts to your wall indicate both influence and engagement.
- Friends: Friend count measures the reach of your network but is less important than how your network engages with your content.
- Retweets: Increase your influence by exposing your content to extended follower networks.
- Mentions: People seeking your attention by mentioning you is a strong signal of influence. We also take into account the differences in types of mentions, including "via" and "cc".
- List Memberships: Being included on lists curated by other users demonstrates your areas of influence.
- Followers: Follower count is one factor in your Score, but we heavily favor engagement over size of audience.
- Replies: Replies show that you are consistently engaging your network with quality content.
Google+
- Comments: Reflect direct engagement by your network.
- +1's: The simplest action that shows engagement with the content you create.
- Reshares: Increase your influence by exposing your content to extended networks on Google+.
- Title: Your reported title on LinkedIn is a signal of your real-world influence and is persistent.
- Connections: Your connection graph helps validate your real-world influence.
- Recommenders: The recommenders in your network add additional signals to the contribution LinkedIn makes to your Score.
- Comments: As a reaction to content you share, comments also reflect direct engagement by your network.
foursquare
- Tips Done: The number of suggestions you've left that have been completed indicate your ability to influence others on foursquare.
Klout
- +K received: Receiving +K increases your Klout Score by an amount that is capped in every 90-day measurement cycle to protect the integrity of the Score.
Wikipedia
- Page Importance: Measured by applying a PageRank algorithm against the Wikipedia page graph.
- Inlinks to Outlinks Ratio: The number of inbound links to a page to the number of outbound links.
- Number of Inlinks: The total number of inbound links to a page.
WHY SHOULD I CARE?
There are three broad reasons marketers, business persons, and everyone else for that matter should care about their Klout score: 1) Increasingly, everyone else does, 2) it's starting to define real-world clout, and 3) it's worth money.
IT TAKES KLOUT
CEO Joe Fernandez refers to Klout as a person's social resume; he's not exaggerating.
Seth Stevenson wrote a great piece about Klout for Wired in which he retells the story of an experienced marketer recruited for a VP position at a large Toronto marketing agency. Despite his 15 years of experience working with a number of major brands, the candidate was stopped cold in an agency interview when he couldn't recite his Klout score. After the interviewer found out it was a mere 34, he cut the meeting short. In the end, the agency hired someone with a Klout score of 67.
Ouch.
CLOUT REDEFINED
In May, Klout announced a partnership with Cathay Pacific Airways, in which San Francisco International Airport visitors using the Klout for iPhone app need only show a Score of 40 or higher to enter the Cathay Pacific First and Business Class Lounge.
Previously, the only way to see the inside of a Cathay Pacific Lounge was by holding a First or Business Class plane ticket. Now, anyone with a mildly-decent score (40 is ok, but not great) can schmooze with the glitterati when travelling through SFO, regardless of whether they are flying Cathay Pacific.
So much for the good ol' fashioned clout with a "c" metrics, like money and position, we've come to know and love.
This point underscores one of the fundamental drives behind Klout. In the "What is Klout" section of the company's website, right under the banner "EVERYONE HAS INFLUENCE," it says:
Previously, people relied almost entirely on radio announcers, TV hosts, and traditional media to shape their opinions. Today, you can drive the conversation, voice your opinion, and connect with people all over the world using social media. Social media has democratized influence.
Pip Pip for the democratization of influence.
MY KLOUT'S WORTH HOW MUCH?
Many people try to pump up their Klout score for the perks-literally. Under the Klout Perks program (in which over 100 companies currently participate), users with certain levels of influence earn real-world stuff, some of which is quite valuable (see info-graphic).
I never knew Tweeting could be such an enriching experience.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Whether or not Klout ultimately lives up to its namesake, brands like Klout are trying to cash in on the ubiquity of social media in our daily lives. With more of us are using social networking as a matter of course on both a personal and business level, it stands to reason that somebody will figure out how to curate, classify, and monetize social influence in a way we'll adhere to. With a catchy name and a growing user base, Klout has a decent head start.
To move us over the tipping point of adoption, Klout is relying on the oldest of metrics: human nature. Admittedly, ever since I found out about Klout, I've been eying my score greedily.
Forget about the size of your stock portfolio (it'll probably be gone soon anyway), what's your Klout score?
At its best, Klout actually does represent a quasi-democratization of influence: virtually anyone with 40 hours and a laptop can improve their online lot. Further, a person's Klout score is out there for everyone to see, which is not true (I hope) of one's stock portfolio.
On the other hand, Klout may end up being a (social) canard, another example of online users chasing unicorns and rainbows.
Ultimately, the choice is yours. For my money, I'm betting on Klout. This is partly because I hope to be employable for the foreseeable future. More than that, though, I really just want to win free stuff.
By the way, have you followed me yet on Twitter? I really want that free Windows phone...