Klout, the controversial service that claims to be able to measure our influence, say that their algorithm has become more accurate, since I ditched the service last year. Like many users, I was amazed how inaccurate Klout scores were and asked for my account to be deleted.
Today, there are well qualified people being refused jobs because their Klout score is too low. That’s how highly some people regard a persons Klout score. It’s also claimed in Wired Magazine that some airlines are offering free upgrades to Klout users with high scores and restaurants are offering better service.
I needed to know if these Klout-based decisions stack up now or of Klout is still as unreliable and easy to fool as it was when I last used it.
So, I had an idea…
I decided to set up a Klout account today, to see what my Klout score will be by simply connecting it to my active social networking accounts and using them as normal – Rather than playing the Klout game.
In other words, I want to find out what Klout score I will get, with me refusing to use Twitter, Google+ and Facebook the way Klout suggest users should, which is pretty much to use social networks non-stop, never stray off-topic and to tweet about Klout every time their pop-up boxes tell me to!
My Klout score on day one of the experiment is (drum roll please) 10 out of 100!
Klout V Clout
A common belief is that Klout is easily fooled into giving influential status, to people who have no real world clout or influence, so long as they spend huge amounts of time doing what Klout says is important. This is why we see kids and long term unemployed people, who play with social networks all day, with a higher Klout score than self made millionaires and business leaders. I want to know if this is still true or if the boffins at Klout have managed to tweak their service, so that it now knows the difference between someone with zero influence who RT’s links non-stop on Twitter and someone with real influence. I recall a year or so ago that Bill Gates had a lower Klout score, than the unemployed son of a friend of mine!
I have no idea how Klout will score me over the coming months. For those of you who don’t know me, here are some of my influence metrics, so you can get a handle on how they might score me:
- This blog was mentioned in The Guardian newspaper recently, for being the most influential marketing blog in the UK and the second most influential UK blog.
- My work is read by over 100,000 people a week (often a lot more).
- My Google+ account is in the top 1%, with over 13,100 people circling me.
- My Twitter account has around 6,500 followers, including Robert Scoble, Mitch Joel, Brand Republic and the Editor in Chief of Mashable, Lance Ulanoff. (Apparently, Klout takes the influence of those who follow us into account.)
I will keep you updated regarding my progress. It will certainly be interesting to see how Klout decide to score me; as someone with some real world influence, who isn’t trying to game their algorithm!
Please share your Klout experiences. I’d love to know what you think.
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I’ve been waiting for someone with a reach like yours to do something like this.
I will follow your klout score with interest Jim.
Rob
Welcome to the blog, Rob.
I will keep you posted.
Great project Jim! I setup a K+ account today for comparison. My reach is a tiny fraction of yours; your score will be many times greater than mine if Klout’s analysis is accurate. Let’s see how this plays out
Hi Mike. That’s an interesting idea.
Please keep me updated on your score.
After cogitating for one night, Klout bumped me to 25 and I think you’re at 60. Klout says it isn’t an equal progression; it’s harder to get from 59 to 60, than from 24 to 25.
I think my 25 is fair; possibly even generous. How do you feel about your 60?
Hi Mike. My score was 10 out of 100 the last time I looked, but following your message I rechecked and yes, they have set it at 60.
It will be interesting to see how the scores perform over the next few months.
I had issues connecting Google+ to Klout, but of that has been connected, it would explain the jump (maybe?)
Thanks for the feedback, sir.
I will be following this with interest. I have given up on caring what my Klout score is because someone with 1 tweet per day and just a personal FB account that is rarely used has a higher score than me.
Hi Brenda. That’s interesting. In my experience it’s those who are all over Facebook and Twitter, that Klout rewards with high Klout scores.
I wonder if they really have changed their algorithm?
I have no faith in klout at all.
Trust me Jim. Your score will be lower than someone with no influence who plays those silly klout games.
Klout = nothing!
It will be interesting to see how they score me, Jill.
Before, I think my score was only around 50 or 60.
Here’s my experience, James.
Klout does not measure influence. Klout simply measures how well you use Klout.
That’s it.
Hi John. I just had a similar comment over on Google+.
Someone there said that Klout rewards those who know how to use Klout, rather than those with influence.
i hope that’s not still the case.
I said “Really!” twice out loud when I read this post, I cannot believe that people are getting turned down for jobs or getting preferential treatment based upon some random algorithm.
When people start handing over their judgement to a random score rather than using their own judgement it’s a sad state of affairs.
You make a very solid point there, Neil.
If you need a score in order to tell if someone has influence, they haven’t.
You know when you are dealing with an influential person AND when you’re not.
Love that, Jim – You know when you are dealing with an influential person AND when you’re not.
Classic.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens Jim. I left Klout as soon as I could opt-out not because of how crappy their score was but due to the fact that they created accounts for people and gave them no way out for quite a long time. I understand how their business model works and that they might have changed how they operate, however I still don’t agree with how they started and won’t be won back by $10 Subway gift cards.
Well said Robert. The way the created accounts for everyone then made it hard to get out, was a disgrace.
I did the same, Robert.
I followed what Danny Brown was experiencing and decided to delete my account.
It will be interesting to see if they have truly improved the algorithm, or if it’s still a case of being rewarded simply because you know how to use Klout and have lots of spare time to dick around with it.
I’ve got a Klout score of just over 50 but I still don’t like it. It’s arbitrary over which Social Media outlets it selects. It doesn’t measure Linkedin does it? I’ve over 1,800 connections there. Is it going to include Pinterest? (Whatever your view of Pinterest is, I’ve found it to be very viral so far). Is it measuring individual blogs? The other thing that concerned me was when I logged into Klout for the first time in months as a result of reading your article, there were a pile of spammy looking notifications waiting for me to send out to my connections on Facebook. Until it is much more comprehensive and accurate I will continue to keep Klout at arm’s length. Business is too important to be left for unreliable, half ready tools to have the final say. I’m also sure that real opinion shapers don’t spend their time tearing their hair out over Klout ratings or ways of manipulating those Klout ratings. No doubt my Klout score will go down now but is that of any consequence?
None of the influential people I know, care a damn about Klout.
That’s the point, Patrick. As you said, the only people who really want to drive their score up, are those without influence, who NEED something to make them look influential. With no genuine influence, it’s attractive to game Klout.
Thanks for the comment, Patrick.
Jim,
Interesting post. I read about those job seekers being turned down because of their low Klout score. I think they probably had a lucky escape.
I had a notice today from Klout to say that I am in influential in ‘Bedroom’ which was amusing. I wrote a post about starting a factory in your bedroom, I hasten to add. I’ve not just turned into a gigolo.
Following your experiment with interest.
Will
Hi Will. You make an excellent point about the kind of employers, so ignorant that they can’t see beyond a Klout score.
I am really hoping that my Klout experience this time will be better.
The idea of a genuinely accurate influence score is extremely interesting to me.
Let’s see. However, your bedroom expert experience suggests that Klout may not have changed as much as I had hoped it would.
Jim, you seem like you actually want klout to work?
Hi Sophie. I would like there to be a way to quickly identify someone’s influence, even if it is just their online influence.
I’d love Klout to be able to give a quality indication of influence, like Google does for sites. A well ranked website on Google is not automatically worth reading, but it does gain your attention, because you TRUST what Google delivers.
If Klout could do that, it would be useful.
I will wait and see too if Klout improves with age like a good wine or cheese, or whether it becomes corked.
I deleted my klout account last year too Jim. I’m thinking of reactivating it but will wait to see your experiences first.
Thanks,
Gareth.
Keep in touch with the blog, Gareth. I will give some updates; assuming something actually happens.
Right now I have a score of 10 and am apparently, “an observer”
I have a 18 year digital footprint, which they seem to be missing
Regarding having to be all over Facebook and Twitter: ss far as I know they evaluate each network with different criteria. If you’re not on Twitter and Facebook, but active on g+, you should be able to get a high score as well.
My Klout jumped 20-something points when I added g+.
Their results – in my opinion – are still silly. But the industry is in its infancy. It’s like search engines 1998.
Measuring online influence is no easy task. It’s easy to criticize first attempts, but they will become better, no doubt.
By the way: Bloggers can complain about Klout (or other social scoring services) as much as they want – a few years from now social scoring will be everywhere, online and offline.
Hi Ralf.
Social scoring will only be everywhere, if like search engines, it actually works.
I’m hoping to find out how much Klout has improved over the past year and will let you know.
Thanks for the comment, sir.
I saw a lot of recent (!) blog posts denying that search engines work.
LOl – Some people just don’t know how to use a search engine
Hey there Jim.
I wonder if klout take into account the number of comments you have generated for your post, in the few hours since you published?
That’s a powerful influence signal and I think they ignore it.
Crazy.
Hi George. No, they can’t take comments into account as many of the Klout ‘stars’ have Z list blogs with no comments and very few posts.
You’re right though, it’s an interesting metric that could make their influence score more reliable.
Wish I’d thought of that for the post!
Interesting idea about measuring the comments here. Could be possible.
Everybody looks only at Klout. There are several other startups working on ways to measure influence.
Some take a route very different from Klout. They don’t use social media statistics (number of posts, likes, comments, shares). Instead they try to analyze content. Which is even more daunting, since the algorithms try to evaluate meaning of written content.
This type of services might take your comments on this blog post into account to measure the influence and sentiment of the post author and all commenters on the specific topic ‘Klout.’
Now that WOULD be interesting, Ralf!
very cool idea Jim, but prob not worth your time. My niece has a higher Klout score than Stephen Hawking! What scares me is the people who are taking it so seriously at the moment.
I see scores like that all the time, Jonathan.
I just logged into mine for the first time in a while – apparently I am now influential in “cheer”. Any idea what that means?!?
Hi Tom and “HORRRAY!”
That’s probably boosted my rating Jim, thanks
I too deleted my account last year when all the sudden my score dropped from 48 to 20 overnight. I realized that I didn’t want my life to be ruled by a klout score.
After reading your post I’m shocked and amazed by the fact that klout has managed to market themselves so well that they now influence employers!!! If they are offering $10 Subway cards for signing up, then aren’t they just buying their own influence to sell themselves, and doesn’t it make their influence questionable? And aren’t they using us for their own benefit rather than ours?
I’d like to see a truly independent source for measuring influence and hope that some innovative, brilliant computer programming genius will develop an entity to compete with klout.
I’ll be curious to see how your experiment goes, but I’m not interested in being caught on a hamster wheel of trying to “earn” klout. When I see groups of people who all agree to give each other klout on a regular basis to get their scores bumped up, it looses its usefulness as the results become skewed in my opinion.
Thanks for the thought provoking post!
You make a very interesting point here, Bridget:
“I’m not interested in being caught on a hamster wheel of trying to “earn” klout.”
That’s the point – Klout is supposed to show how influential a person is, NOT score them for playing games with Klout.
Thanks Bridget.
Hi Jim, a great debate you’ve triggered here.
I heard Thomas Power relating the examples of CV filter and Rewards based on Klout and I was initially shocked, but then it grew on me, with caveats.
It’s still early days, Klout will improve, there will be other indexes, they can be ‘gamed’, but they are a useful tool to help us cope with the sheer volume of content, respond on a ‘just-in-time’ basis and short-list people with authority.
We have rev-counters in our cars, but we rarely use them, and a diesel engine behaves differently to a petrol one. There are Music charts that help us find new bands, but we don’t have to like ones just because they are top of the charts.
It’s a very interesting journey we are on.
These are early days, Mark.
I’d like a genuinely useful way for us to gain some idea, of a person’s online reach. It’s more than their numbers too.
A guy with 300,000 Twitter followers retweeted one of my older posts recently and generated 20 clicks! His numbers look impressive but he has no influence with his ‘followers’. Chris Brogan does the same and I get hundreds, then thousands of people visit the site.
Thanks for the feedback, Mark.
You are certainly going to rise to the top of the Google search ranks for “Klout” with this post! Unless, of course, the keyword has now been used too much in one post and they decide your it is just spam.
It’s all a game. It’s the individuals whose lives we touch each day that really matters.
It’s all about people, Dorothy. I was saying this just the other day: http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2012/04/25/youre-in-the-people-business/
Thanks for the comment, and for keeping it human.
I’m not so sure social media sites are an accurate measure of influence. It would be more accurate to interview buyers in your specific market, but of course that would be time and money intensive.
I would like to be able to use Klout not simply to measure my own influence but to know who might be worthwhile connecting with in a certain field of influence. I haven’t found it altogether reliable from that standpoint.
Jim, I love the post. I opted out of Klout a long time ago. I do not find it reliable at all and I almost think it is a game. I almost think you have to game the system in order to get any Klout score.
What I think Klout is for is getting perks not measuring social media influence. So really it is all about generating revenue for Klout.
I will not go back to Klout at all. I personally think the service should be ignored.
I’m not a number chaser, but I had a look after connecting a few social accounts. What’s weird, is that my number is currently 47… but, when I look the networks that I influence in – 90% of it comes from Facebook.
I have a very small circle (30+) of close friends I see in real life too that I share with on Facebook. None of it is published publicly, and I’m not sure how influential I am to these 30. Yet, somehow that qualifies me for a Klout score of 47?
Just on my personal experience, I think it doesn’t really reflect my influence very well.
I just joined Klout, connecting it to a rarely active Twitter account. I had a score of 10. I then added my facebook, google plus, linkedIn flickr accounts and I still had a 10 (even I’m more active on facebook, linkedin and flickr). There are not statistics for any of the sites except Twitter. Is this some sort of bug?– Sorry, I’m new to this.
Hi Tira. I’m also new to Klout, however, I know from my own case that it took 48 hours for Klout to start ‘seeing’ data from my Facebook and Google+ accounts. It seems to connect your Twitter account quicker. I also started with a score of 10 (maybe that’s where we all start off on Klout now). Give it a couple of days and if you still can’t see your accounts listed in Klout, drop Klout an email.
Hope that helps.
Thanks