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Social media influence – that's about as vague for a description that I can give you.

Klout has been around for 3 years, if you're on Twitter more than likely it's safe to assume that you know who the company is and what they look to measure through their Klout Score metric.

Tomorrow morning I get the distinct privilege to sit on a conference call, as part of the Klout Squad, and get first hand insight to the new scoring algorithm, and other various enhancements and usability improvements to Klout.

Joe Fernandez and his team have a good thing going with Klout – advertisers, brands, and businesses small and large are paying attention to what is perceived as an individuals capability to influence behavior through social media platforms.

Watch this quick video that was recently released and posted on WSJ where Joe and some influencers speak about the what and why of Klout and about the ever-important WIFM (what's in it for me) as they discuss the Klout Perks that individuals can receive for being influential in a given topic.

I'll update this post after the 8am PST call with all the updates. Until then, I'll give the nod to a TheNextWeb and the great article written by Drew Olanoff tonight after he had a chance to speak directly with Joe Fernandez.

Update: So the preview call is done, and we got to see some of the new goodness ahead of time – the tech team at Klout was still coding away so there were still a few issues showing us detailed score insights.

That being said the focus of the conversation was to let us know that the focus of Klout really is taking a dynamic shift. More focus on what they're call a PeopleRank algorithm.

From the Klout Blog,

…Since influence is the ability to drive action and is based on quality, not quantity. When someone engages with your content, we assess that action in the context of the person’s own activity. These principles form the basis of our PeopleRank algorithm which determines your Score based on:

how many people you influence,
how much you influence them and
how influential they are.

Let me say it – hallelujah – the fact that Klout is now consciously rewarding quality instead of spammy quantity blind RTs and links. Now we're getting somewhere…

The mention that “all platforms are viewed equally” is also a great achievement. Even though I logged into my new-and-improved more accurate Klout score moments ago and saw that it dipped by a whopping 8 points, it's good to see that more folks outside of just Twitter show up in my influence network.

Major step forward team – great to see the refinements. Keep 'em coming

Size Does Matter When It Comes to Klout 1

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of HicksNewMedia, a Digital Publishing and Technology Consulting team providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to more effective utilize the social interweb. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.

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  • Hi James,

    I think that ‘Size does matter when it comes to Klout’ is fine if you are a person who is influential in the media world but for 99% of the population (forgive the Occupy Wall St ref) this doesn’t matter as ‘Size matters within their own social networks’. I have a site called Cliqsearch.com and we care about influential people in media in order to get coverage but the greatest benefit to our consumers and businesses, products and places that are on our site is to identify those ‘normal’ people who are the biggest influencers. My friend who has been to a restaurant or used a local service such as a contractor is infinitely more valuable to me than Robert Scoble suggesting the same thing.

    I haven’t crunched the numbers but for the <1% of major influencers out there, how many people do they truly influence vs the influence that comes from their close ties in their social networks? My guess is that ultimately the opinion of the <1% doesn't influence much (lest say people such as Steve Jobs).

    Interested in your thoughts.

    • @JasonProbert that Occupy Wall Street reference was priceless!! I’d like to talk to you more about cliqsearch. I’ve actually recently also done an interview with the CEO of PeopleBrowsr that generates a similar metric called kred – you can see that post here: http://bit.ly/qKDgGS. I point that article out because I am intrigued by these various tools and want to get a better understanding of which is “most accurate” primarily for the normal user.

      Thanks for your insightful comment as well. Will be in touch

  • Hi James,

    I think that ‘Size does matter when it comes to Klout’ is fine if you are a person who is influential in the media world but for 99% of the population (forgive the Occupy Wall St ref) this doesn’t matter as ‘Size matters within their own social networks’. I have a site called Cliqsearch.com and we care about influential people in media in order to get coverage but the greatest benefit to our consumers and businesses, products and places that are on our site is to identify those ‘normal’ people who are the biggest influencers. My friend who has been to a restaurant or used a local service such as a contractor is infinitely more valuable to me than Robert Scoble suggesting the same thing.

    I haven’t crunched the numbers but for the <1% of major influencers out there, how many people do they truly influence vs the influence that comes from their close ties in their social networks? My guess is that ultimately the opinion of the <1% doesn't influence much (lest say people such as Steve Jobs).

    Interested in your thoughts.

    • @JasonProbert that Occupy Wall Street reference was priceless!! I’d like to talk to you more about cliqsearch. I’ve actually recently also done an interview with the CEO of PeopleBrowsr that generates a similar metric called kred – you can see that post here: http://bit.ly/qKDgGS. I point that article out because I am intrigued by these various tools and want to get a better understanding of which is “most accurate” primarily for the normal user.

      Thanks for your insightful comment as well. Will be in touch

  • James Hi,

    love this sentence: Let me say it – hallelujah – the fact that Klout is now consciously rewarding quality instead of spammy quantity blind RTs and links. Now we’re getting somewhere…

    so how would you explain then this profile ( sorry i am posting link to my post as i cant attach picture in your comment) http://jureklepic.com/2011/10/26/is-klout-on-the-way-out/ . We all know that #followteamback are spam accounts in majority in Social Media and still with all “super” changes of Klout they are hitting scores of 77.

    Klout doesn’t measure any influence lets be honest, they measure raw action data and action was never an influence and never will be.

    What Klout did not tell us is that subscores will drop drastically, so which only shows how off were Klout measurements before. And would be really stupid to believe that new once are better. All what they did is to show the brands what kind of ripp off they really are when comes to Perks. IMO Klout Perks is nothing better then a fluffy “Ponzi Scheme” when comes to selling the so called “influence”.

    I hope you get access to @kred soon, and see how accurate and transparent service is, Klout can’t and will never come close to accuracy that Kred provide. It is a big diference when pure data company like Peoplebrowsr starts offering service of measurements. They have collection of every tweets from 2007 till today.

  • James Hi,

    love this sentence: Let me say it – hallelujah – the fact that Klout is now consciously rewarding quality instead of spammy quantity blind RTs and links. Now we’re getting somewhere…

    so how would you explain then this profile ( sorry i am posting link to my post as i cant attach picture in your comment) http://jureklepic.com/2011/10/26/is-klout-on-the-way-out/ . We all know that #followteamback are spam accounts in majority in Social Media and still with all “super” changes of Klout they are hitting scores of 77.

    Klout doesn’t measure any influence lets be honest, they measure raw action data and action was never an influence and never will be.

    What Klout did not tell us is that subscores will drop drastically, so which only shows how off were Klout measurements before. And would be really stupid to believe that new once are better. All what they did is to show the brands what kind of ripp off they really are when comes to Perks. IMO Klout Perks is nothing better then a fluffy “Ponzi Scheme” when comes to selling the so called “influence”.

    I hope you get access to @kred soon, and see how accurate and transparent service is, Klout can’t and will never come close to accuracy that Kred provide. It is a big diference when pure data company like Peoplebrowsr starts offering service of measurements. They have collection of every tweets from 2007 till today.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of HicksNewMedia, a Digital Publishing and Technology Consulting team providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to more effective utilize the social interweb. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.

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