Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, has raised $8.5 million in new funding led by the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer recently launched sFund with participation from Greycroft Partners. Angel investors, including ff Asset Management, Paige Craig, Howard Lindzon, Thomas McInerney, Bobby Yazdani, Shervin Pishevar, and others also participated in the round. This investment brings Klout’s funding to more than $10 million. Kleiner partner Bing Gordon will join Klout’s board of directors.
Klout, which markets itself as a “standard for influence” on the web, evaluates Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals and topics around the web. On Twitter, Klout’s influence score is based on a user’s ability to drive action through Tweets, ReTweets and more. On Facebook, Klout will examine how conversations and content generate interest and engagement, via likes, comments, and more, from the network’s 500 million-plus users.
The company also offers an API, which has become popular among social media applications to give users a picture of how influential Twitter and Facebook users are. As of last year, over 1250 startups were using Klout’s API.
Klout says that it will use the new funding to hire more engineers and to add more services beyond Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to the Klout algorithm.
Klout measures influence based on the ability to drive action across the social web. Any person can connect their social network accounts and Klout will generate a score on a scale of 1-100 that represents their ability to engage other people and inspire social actions. Klout enables everyone to gain insights that help them better understand how they influence others. Klout also provides people with opportunities to shape and be recognized for their influence.
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