Editor’s Note:  TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah currently at Votizen and lives in Palo Alto; you can follow him on twitter @semil

This is one of those posts where the video itself and the subsequent comments will be far more interesting than anything I can possibly write, so I’ll just briefly set the stage.

For the past few months, as Klout has increased its own influence as a consumer web company and recently raised $30M in Series C funding. Along the way, there’s been no shortage of commentary and criticism about the service. Some find the Klout score irrelevant or crude, or they don’t like the idea of a third-party ranking people, or they’ll go so far as to wonder if Klout is contributing to make the world a better place.

While some of these criticisms may be taking the site a little too seriously, Klout’s founder and CEO Joe Fernandez came into the TechCrunch Studio to address the concerns head-on. In our talk, Fernandez discusses how he came up with the idea for Klout, how he moved to Singapore for a while to build it with folks he’d hired at the time, and how he’s excited that a little site he began building four years ago now ignites such strong debates. And, moving forward to 2012, he shares specific examples of how Klout can be used in new ways, such as in politics, sports, and entertainment.

While he hears all the naysayers, Fernandez says all the criticism just motivates him and the team to get better and continue pushing forward. At the moment, he says, Klout has the best metric out there. So before you comment, fire up the video and listen to what Fernandez has to say, directly from the person who founded the company, who currently leads the team, and who has thought quite deeply about the interplay between influence and marketing on the Internet.