network20q

How influential are you among your peers? Let’s ask Klout

With the ever-expanding presence of social networks in our daily life, users are becoming more and more conscious about increasing the extent of their social influence. Many companies now want their marketing, public relations, and publicity personnel to provide their Klout score at the time of recruitment. The Klout scores are a measure of an individual’s ability to drive other members of his or her social network to action, typically through retweeting content, replying, “liking”, and sharing the posted content of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc. Every time a person creates content or engages in conversation with others, they are in the act of socially influencing these peers. And it is this influence that Klout scores on a scale of 0 (least influential) to 100 (most influential). For example, Justin Beiber has a Klout score of 100, while Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific magazines, has a Klout score of 64 (no surprises there, science never stood a chance against Justin Bieber! ).

The Klout Score uses data from social networks (although they don’t disclose the details, except that they consider some 35 metrics to determine the score) in order to measure:

True Reach: How many people you influence

Amplification: How much you influence them

Network Impact: The influence of your network

Many people have evaluated the benefits of Klout while others have argued against putting too much weightage on social influence metrics. Arguments made by holders of these two opposing views can be found at the following sites:

1. http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8026-klout-matters-but-not-for-business

2. http://www.businessesgrow.com/2011/09/12/why-klout-matters-a-lot/

3. http://tinyurl.com/kloutbenefits

While the battle over usefulness rages on, Klout has been working hard to improve their scoring algorithm. In the past, Klout’s scoring algorithm had been questioned by many, see “The Trouble with Klout” for more- http://gillin.com/blog/2011/09/the-trouble-with-klout/ for details.

So in the latest tweak to their algorithm, Klout is now evaluating an individual’s influence score by placing more weight on how many other influential people are following or getting influenced by this individual. The move has irked many, especially those who use Klout scores in their professional life. But whether the latest move was effective or not is yet to be seen. And this is where you can come in and explore Klout with a healthy dose of scientific skepticism, logical reasoning, and penchant for mischief to find out if Klout really works. It will be fun for each one of you to start looking after your Klout score and figuring out ways to improve it, perhaps by even tricking their algorithm .

To get started with Klout, simply log in at http://klout.com/corp/kscore with your Twitter or Facebook account.

~Soumya

Follow @SamSen4