Ken Blanchard – “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority”
Klout has existed for the last 6 years’, but what prompted me to get involved was a recent comment from a family member, “so Joe, what’s your Klout score then?”
As it stands on Friday 15th August 2014 my Klout score is 62. Lovely, but what does it mean? Why do people care? And where on Earth do they get this figure from?
As someone who has always played video games, the idea of ‘levelling up’ in life is a fun challenge. I always compare Klout to World of Warcraft. Instead of being a level 62 Paladin with an enchanted Two-Handed Mace, I am a level 62 Recruitment Consultant with an enchanted free pen.
But what is Klout and what does your Klout score mean? Klout allows you to connect all your social media channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, FourSquare and Wikipedia) into a central hub and will search the internet at large for your details. With ingenious algorithms and multifaceted data analysis it will measure your ‘influence’ and give you a score ranging from 0 to 100 (link below).
Why do people care? The Klout score is now integrated into society (especially the USA) and has notably gone as far as being a factor when making hiring decisions (link below). Social networks are a fantastic product of the internet, but should our ‘influence’ on and offline be quantified into a score between 0 and 100?
The key question is not can it be done, but can it be done accurately?
Since 2008 Klout has redesigned and redeveloped their algorithms so to ensure accuracy. For example, Barak Obama has a score of 99 because he is genuinely influential and not just because he has 45 million Twitter followers. As our lives become more digital and our life’s data becomes accessible on the internet, Klout can create more accurate Klout scores.
So, perhaps in the not too distant future, people may start to only choose their friends, their employees and who they should look up to based on a number. Interesting thought hey?
PS, I have never played World of Warcraft and never will.
- https://klout.com/corp/score
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/25/do-you-have-klout-employers-want-to-know/
Joe Burridge 