There has been a ton of talk recently about the changes in Klout and the uproar it has caused has been the hottest topic on Twitter.
Your Klout score is now determined by your level of activity across the various networks they score.
Klout said:
“Influence is the ability to drive action and is based on quality, not quantity. When someone engages with your content, we assess that action in the context of the person’s own activity. These principles form the basis of our PeopleRank algorithm which determines your Score based on how many people you influence, how much you influence them and how influential they are.
We analyze 2.7 billion pieces of content and connections daily. Reaching this scale, we’ve introduced significant upgrades to our platform, allowing us to handle this explosive growth. Now, we can add more networks and other sources of your influence much, much faster.”
The day that Klout changed its methods (October 27, 2011), every other tweet was bout Klout and why their scores dropped. Some were flabbergasted, worried about how their jobs might be affected.
Should we really put that much value into a Klout score? Is there really an accurate algorithm that can calculate our influence? Does it truly determine our level of influence?
According to some who work online, as bloggers for example, they believe that number is very important. @cecilyk responded to my tweet with a response that “people who hire us care”.
She made an interesting point. There are some PR agencies and brands who are looking to work with bloggers and they look at that Klout score first. Once they see that number, they then proceed to look at individual influence, ie. twitter followers and Facebook fans, etc.
However, some can argue that those agencies and brands who only look at Klout numbers to begin with, just don’t get social media at all. They obviously don’t understand how social media influence really works – it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality of fans/followers.
The presence of Klout causes people to treat Twitter strictly like a business – tweeting for the purpose of keeping up or increasing scores, following those who have a certain number of followers to increase your score, and even tweeting solely for the purpose of causing a reaction in RTs.
The problem is, many are forgetting that the joy of twitter is discovering new people and enjoying people’s words and thoughts. Twitter is meant to be social and engaging – Klout takes the fun away from that.
When you are constantly tweeting and promoting and now keeping in mind that those you follow also influence your score, it becomes overwhelming and exhausting – read my social media fatigue post.
All this noise on all of the social media platforms will eventually lead to a massive crash. This is my prediction anyway.
I’m not alone in my feelings. David Shing, the man who helps figure out future trends for AOL, is also fed up with Facebook and Twitter. He recently said that defriending and unfollowing are going to be the next big thing as users realise that the increasing “noise” on social networks is counterproductive.
Let’s just hope that Twitter doesn’t suffer because of Klout and that it ends up with a fate like MySpace.
What do you think?
10 Comments
I think that large companies are remiss in using Klout scores to evaluate “status” online, and that we need to be very wary of how invasive these types of applications are.
When a system is so flawed that people can boost their own scores by having multiple accounts, and when people are basically forced to beg friends and followers for +K, it’s a sad system.
Those who influence, influence regardless of how some random algorithms rate them.
Thanks for your comment Alex. I agree with you – let’s hope that large companies are aware too!
I’m so not into klout, and I think my score it considered ‘healthy,’ even after the changes.
Call me a purist, but it stands for everything I hate about social media. Klout says it judges ‘quality,’ but there are a lot of things that get retweeted that I do not consider quality content.
Even if I am being considered for a job, I would hope that someone would look at more than just my metrics when determining if I am the right person for the task.
Exactly Karen, my hope is that those who hire are looking at my skills and writing – not my Klout score. Thanks for commenting 🙂
I was shocked when the change came and did very much worry about what would happen with my blog. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one upset and I’ve actually had some amazing opportunities since so I’m not worried anymore.
There needs to be another way of measuring this stuff, not just Klout.
Thanks for commenting, Amy. The opportunities will continue to flow, Klout score or not!
I don’t set much store by my Klout score, or at least I try not to. It means nothing in the big scheme of things, but it still feels nice to see it go up, ya know? That being said, I ran a rather popular giveaway a while back and my Klout went up by over 10 points one weekend because of the RTs. It was ludicrous. Old system of course, but still.
Anyway. I do know my score, and it’s down about 16 points after the change. And I don’t care. I do have some concern about missed opportunities because of certain PR companies relying (mistakenly I believe) on Klout to derive influence and judge their ROI. But I’m still getting pitched, so maybe they’re learning too 🙂
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Thanks,
Anne
Hey! Liked your post, read the comments above too.. I have NEVER used Klout, i do have a blog and i hire bloggers simply by looking at their writing skills, depth of knowledge and what exactly he is trying to showcase.
I was advised by few friends of mine, that i should check the Klout score before hiring someone. But so far i have never really checked the scores and none of the bloggers that work for me have shared their scores.. so i guess i am not missing something great and i can do without it!
I agree to your post, I think that large companies are remiss in using Klout scores to evaluate “status” online, and that we need to be very wary of how invasive these types of applications are, thanks for sharing.