Klout Adds Topic Pages To Give Users More Context Around A Subject And Its Influencers

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Thursday, September 15th, 2011
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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.


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

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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