To Klout or Not to Klout | SocialExcerpts

To Klout or Not to Klout Dec 08

Klout

If you are on Social Media, you surely have come across Klout. It is a social media analytics company that keeps track of the activities of a user online and grades him/her on several metrics, which finally translates into a much “coveted” Klout score. However, after Klout changed their algorithm last October, the company has been facing a lot of backlash, online.

Many people are averse to any form of grading their social media influence. Alfred Edmond Junior tweets, “Social Media influence is like a butterfly. If you chase it, you have as great a chance of killing it, as you do of catching it.” And this is true. Klout does not measure how good a “friend” you are, or how healthy your online relationship is. At the end of the day, Klout is just a score.

But people have been using this score and trusted it to the point of referring to their Klout scores, during client engagement. Think of it, your Klout score is your online reputation, it is how others perceive you (or your company). So would it be wise to undo your past efforts? Jason Falls has a good take on this. He writes,

“And cancelling your Klout account means nothing other than you were upset your score went down. The algorithm changes attacked your sense of self-worth, and you can’t face another day being a 37 rather than a 42.”

This race to quit Klout is slowly making it less useful. Any accurate metric depends on good data. While Klout score may not matter to you, making it worse for another person to whom the score matters, makes no sense either.

On the brighter side, Klout APIs are still being used heavily, reports Christopher S Penn. “I run into ‘Service too busy’ notices more often, than I’d like. Klout’s API gives you at the free level 10 calls per second, 10,000 requests per day, which is a tremendous amount, and people are using it.”, he writes.

With the launch of “Sashes” feature and “Add a topic” button, Klout surely is trying to woo the users back to its fold. Joining or leaving Klout, is not about being a part of a bandwagon. It’s not about a number, and what people perceive about you. Klout score was, is and probably will remain all about – YOU. It’s how much social media clout means to you, and how you choose to represent it, is up to you.

So, have YOU decided whether to Klout or not to Klout?