• Klout CEO: We Made the Decision to Go for It (TCTV)

    Monday, January 10th, 2011

    Sarah Lacy writes for PandoDaily, a news site which she founded. She is also an award winning journalist and author of two critically acclaimed books, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0” (Gotham Books, May 2008) and “Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos... → Learn More

    Klout’s funding news this morning was quickly drowned out by Square’s funding and then both were drowned out by Groupon’s gargantuan round.

    But for Klout, the funding round was pretty significant. In raising a surprisingly large $8.5 million, the company was singling its decision not to take a flip and to try to build a big company out of measuring influence online. For Klout founder and CEO Joe Fernandez, it’s a human version of page rank and the opportunity can be just as big.

    Fernandez stopped by TechCrunch to talk about the inside drama of the round, including the team’s wrestling over whether to flip-or-not, whose money to take and what all that cash will be used for.

    In a future segment, we dive into my concern: Can influence online really be accurately measured?

    Video below.


    Company: Klout
    Website: klout.com
    Launch Date: August 2008
    Funding: $40M

    Klout allows users to track the impact of their opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph. Data is collected about the content users create, how people interact with that content and the size and composition of their networks. Klout identifies influencers and provides tools for influencers to monitor their influence.

    Learn more

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