Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr and others, is expanding its product lineup today with the availability of topic pages.
Klout, which just hit 100 million Klout scores, aims to provide more context about a specific topic. On the topic page, Klout shows the top influencers in a given topic, regardless of their overall Klout score. Pages showcase content that recently influenced others, as well as top +K recipients (+K is a measurement tool Klout offers users to vote for peers’ influence in topics). Klout compares this to the ‘people’s choice award.’ Klout says that it plans to add analytics, trends, and more to topic pages.
For example, my Topic Page for Venture Capital includes Mark Suster, Josh Kopelman and David Hornik as top influencers. Top +K recipients include Fred Wilson. Around each piece of content shared, you can see who influenced and shared that content.
Topic pages can be accessed by clicking through any topic link on the site, such as from someone’s topic page. Top influencers on a topic are determined based on interactions and engagement from other topical influencers on content. As founder Joe Fernandez tells me, this helps turn Klout into more of a discovery platform, as opposed to just checking your own (or another’s) score.
For now, topic pages are open to users who opted into the Topic page preview perk last month, says Klout. The startup plans to let more people into the topic pages preview in the coming weeks.
For background, Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals on social networks. 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 hundreds of millions of users.
