Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, has made a key hire today—a VP of Engineering. And the Kleiner Perkins-backed startup nabbed a seasoned analytics exec from Yahoo, David Mariani.
Mariani was most recently was the Vice President of User Data and Analytics at Yahoo. While at Yahoo Dave managed engineering for all of Yahoo’s audience and advertising analytics platforms where they processed 30-plus billion user and advertising events per day. Mariani joined Yahoo through the $300 million acquisition of Blue Lithium where he served as CTO.
Prior to his role at Blue Lithium, Mariani founded MineShare and sold the company to Digital Impact for $34.4 million. Digital Impact, where Mariani was CTO, was sold to Acxiom Corporation for $140 million. He also served as CTO of Acxiom Digital following the acquisition.
For background, Klout 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 600 million-plus users.
For Klout, a seasoned analytics exec is a must. On a daily basis the company ingests and semantically analyzes 100-plus million tweets, Facebook status updates and LinkedIn updates to analyze the Klout Score for over 75 million people. And the company serves hundreds of millions of API calls for its over 2000 partners.
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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