UPDATE: Andrew Grill, CEO Peoplebrowsr in the UK has been good enough to provide me with screengrabs of my own KRED score whilst KRED is still in invite-only mode.
You will be able to see the simple yet valuable way in which KRED:
1) Provides a good deal of scope to evaluate my ability to influence others to take action: 668/1000
2) Puts a number (out of 9) to my willingness to interact with others others: 6/9
As we all well know, the world of measuring influence is fraught with problems. Tools like Peerindex and Klout are the life-saver for lazy markteers and pr's looking for the easiest way to find influencers to talk about their product. Debate about their algorithms-aside, both Peerindex and Klout are now beginning to demonstrate attempts at one of the fundamental issue that relates to influence, which is one of context.
On what topic is a person influential?
I may be influential on cricket, football and (hopefully!) marketing, but not at all influential about music or art. Just because I have an opinion about these latter 2, does not make me influential about them. But, tools to date have done a pretty poor job of identifying the distinction between the things I talk about and the things I am influential/knowledgeable about.
There is also another factor that I think will take longer to fathom and something which I talked about here on Social Media Today when looking at how trust usurps influence. To everyone outside my close-knit communities, I have an influence on a small number of topics. However, to my closest friends, my opinion on everything is valued.
All this begs the question - is there a boundary at which all attempts to measure influence by topic are limited?
Peerindex provides you with a score based around a number of general topic areas, thus:
So, interesting, but still quite general which is not great.
Klout on the other hand, attempts to nail context more granularly by trying to identify specific topics. It is unclear whether this is being run against a lookup table to determine more general topics (social media, marketing etc.) or whether it is simply filtering the most frequently used words from the places it digs for you.
As good as this might sound though, it is perhaps doing more damage than good. As it struggles to handle a huge range of topics I discuss online, it presents, quite frequently, topics that I barely even remember writing about, let alone think I am knowledgeable enough to consider myself influential on.
Do Peoplebrowsr have the answer though? This week they launched KRED, a topic-based influencer tool which identifies not only how "influential you are" but also the topics on which you are influential, and, how "social" you are i.e. how likely you are to share content.