Business Bytes
Jan 21, 2011

The Klout Score, a Way to Measure Online Influence

 

Klout has been in the public eye lately, especially after closing an $8.5 million funding round with Kleiner Perkins.  Klout measures internet influence based off of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn activity.  Klout measures Retweets, Likes, and Comments to decide how high or low your Klout score is.

Klout is helpful for any business that wants to track its influence on the web.  Since Klout is a measurement tool, a business can track its Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts through Klout and compare results over a period of time.

But does Klout score actual clout?  The Klout score is limited to the social web; it can't see what is happening in real life.  Warren Buffett is just now starting to use Twitter.  Does he have less clout because he's so late to Twitter?  I think not.  On a scale of 1 to 100, his Klout score is 36 and by 'Klout Classification', he is considered a Specialist: a person who has a specific expertise and a highly valued opinion.  Maybe the classification is more accurate of actual clout than the Klout score itself.

I put Klout to the test with my own Twitter feed.  My current Klout score is 30.  My 'True Reach' score is 118, which means that 118 real people pay attention to my Twitter feed.  Klout classified my actions on Twitter as an Explorer, which they define as someone who is engaged in the social web, but still exploring.  Klout considers Explorers as people who will move up in the social web.

When I look at my score, it makes me think that I can do more on Twitter, not only in quantity but quality.  I can include more of what I do all over the web; this blog, my Project Management Blog, Facebook—all of it could be relayed back to Twitter.  The Klout score seems to be heavily influenced by retweets.  How can I increase the number of times I am retweeted?  I'm going to conduct an experiment – stay tuned for the results…

Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx, which offers customers solutions to reach the highest levels of profitability.  Curt is an avid speaker and writer.


Curt Finch has more than two decades of software development and distributed workforce management experience. In 1997, Curt created the world's first internet-based timesheet application and the foundation for the current Journyx product offering. Curt has a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. His book, All Your Money, is available on Amazon. @curtfinch