So what does a high Klout score actually get you? The influence-measuring startup already offers prizes through its Klout Perks program, and there are bragging rights (unless your friends think you’re a loser for caring about your Klout score). Now Klout is asking users who are influential on a given topic to answer short, factual questions through the new Klout Experts program. It sounds like the… → Read More
Klout, the service for measuring online influence, is boosting its integration with both Bing and Instagram today.
On the Bing side, the news follows last fall’s announcement of a strategic investment from and partnership with Microsoft. That announcement included the unveiling of a feature in Bing that would show Klout scores for select people. (And Bing continues to surface more data on that… → Read More
Endorsements, a lightweight way for people on LinkedIn to recommend each other’s skills, has picked up some significant traction in its first five months of life. Today, LinkedIn is announcing that Endorsements has passed the 1 billion milestone — with 58 million members getting recognition on their profiles for different areas of expertise, according to a blog post from Peter Rusev. The marker… → Read More
Like a growing number of students, Ben Kosinski attended multiple universities over the course of his collegiate career. Although these schools differed wildly in culture and the makeup of their student bodies, the one thing that seems to remain true at any school, he says, is the level of influence online social identities have come to play in the daily life of college students. Yet, in spite of… → Read More
Online social influence is something that can really rub people the wrong way. Klout obviously believes in it wholeheartedly; others, not so much. Now, in a move that’s sure to generate its fair share of criticism, Klout has updated its iPhone app with Passbook support, allowing users to create their own “Klout Card,” which lives in Passbook and can help users “show off [their] influence.” → Read More
Over the weekend, I wrote a post about Salesforce telling potential job applicants that one of its “desired skills” was having a Klout score of 35 or more. Needless to say, I found this to be a bit unsettling, as I instantly imagined other companies forcing this into their own job applications. → Read More
Let’s put it out there right now: I am personally not a fan of Klout, which ranks people based on their Internet interactions and engagement on services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. I have nothing against the company whatsoever, and this is a vertical that someone was going to get into sooner or later.
However, I still feel like the whole concept is bunk. → Read More
Klout, the site that aims to measure your online influence, has made some big changes to its scoring system, and it has a new look to match the new algorithm.
Founder and CEO Joe Fernandez says that the old Klout score looked at less than 100 “signals”, while the new one looks at more than 400. Put another way, he says the amount of data points that the company analyzes daily is expanding from… → Read More
It’s of note to mention that BlogFrog has developed a platform that would not be possible without women bloggers.
The newly available platform has a network of 100,000 “social influencers.” Women represent 95% of that community. These are women who write about parenting, food, health, fashion and home and garden. → Read More
PeerIndex, the Klout-like influencer ranking startup which this year picked up a $3 Million Series A round, is beefing up its team and scaling up operations. Specifically, it’s hired Garth Holsinger, Klout’s ex-VP of Sales and Business Development, to help accelerate their marketing and partnerships. This makes for a significant move, especially since they’ve lured him away from the very agency… → Read More
Kred today launches “Rewards” so you can win discounts and product samples if you get retweeted and Liked enough. That doesn’t mean you should TRY to get retweeted or Liked more, but now there’s at least a reason to sign up to see your influence score.
While you might think this score is meaningless, marketers want to reach people who can actually influence others to care about them, and… → Read More
I like Joe Fernandez a lot, more than I like most people. He’s a true entrepreneur and badass, asking specifically to be onstage with me at LeWeb London because he knew that I had serious misgivings about his product, Klout. He told me he wanted a challenge and to put himself outside his comfort zone, both before and after the interview. Cool, anyone who’s not scared of being in the hot seat… → Read More
Today, the influence measuring startup Klout is rolling out a major update to its iOS application, which first debuted in April. The initial version of the app offered Klout users a handy way to keep track of their Klout score on the go – it even made clever use of Apple’s push notifications feature to do so, popping up your Klout score in the red badge on top of the Klout’s homescreen icon. But… → Read More
It’s not clear if this is a one-off glitch, a signal of a bigger issue — or a way of pumping up/sabotaging Klout scores for those who care. But it’s not great news any way you spin it, if it’s true: a Klout user has gotten in touch to say that when he accesses the social influence ratings service, he is getting signed in to Klout not as himself but as someone else.
Using an HTC Sensation… → Read More
Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, has just released a new version of its API and released a number of new stats about its API usage.
Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals on social networks. Klout says… → Read More
Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is debuting its first mobile presence today with the launch of an iOS app. While Klout had a mobile website, this is the startup’s first native mobile app.
Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the… → Read More
Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is launching a new feature called Brand Squads, consisting of dedicated profile pages which give companies a centralized place to engage with influencers.
For background, Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to… → Read More
Whether you subscribe to the idea of social influence or not, services that mark — or try to mark — it are continuing to pick up momentum, and the latest example of that is PeerIndex, the UK-based social influence marketing platform, picking up a $3 million round of funding from a group of angel and private equity investors.
The Series A round was led by Antrak Capital with participation from… → Read More
Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and other social media sites, is expanding the functionality of its Perks program. Klout Perks are exclusive offers or experiences, given as a result of your Klout score. For the first time, Klout is matching savings based upon a specific score.
The startup is partnering with flash sales site Gilt to allow Klout… → Read More
The drive for more information has long been fueling the growth of the Internet, but that rising tide is not automatically lifting all boats, as one company trying to ride the wave has seen.
Beepl, a Q&A startup co-founded last year and led by ex-TechCrunch writer Steve O’Hear, has now lost him as CEO over what TechCrunch understands to be a dispute around future strategy. O’Hear confirmed… → Read More
Flush with new capital, Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is making its first acquisition. Klout is purchasing mobile and local neighborhood app Blockboard. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Blockboard develops a neighborhood app through which neighbors can interact with one another. They… → Read More
As I’ve written about before, we’re in an amazing period of the consumer Internet. Despite a shaky economy, many web companies are in hypergrowth. This is reminiscent of the five-year period over a decade ago when companies like Amazon, Netscape, eBay, Yahoo, Google and PayPal were built.
One challenge, which isn’t new, is the battle for consumer attention. If you’re looking to… → Read More
Over the last month, Charles Stross memorably called the online influence measurer Klout “the internet equivalent of herpes,” Rohn Miller of Social Media Today exhorted people to “Delete your Klout profile now,” John Scalzi lambasted it as “sad, and possibly evil,” the New York Times wrote about parents’ outrage when they discovered Klout was autogenerating accounts for minors, Flout caustically… → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — returned to the Social Wars with renewed vigor courtesy of two weeks of material. These issues included the Klout algorithm crisis, more fun with iOS 5 push notifications, the incredible shrinking Google+ numbers, and @scobleizer’s fabulous Verb Wall aka Spotify Motel where data goes into Facebook and never comes… → Read More
While everyone is making up their minds about whether Klout is an utterly meaningless service or the divine “standard for influence” the world has been clamoring for, I had an interesting chat with Klout co-founder and CEO Joe Fernandez the other day at the F.ounders conference in Dublin, Ireland.
When I informed him that, if anything, I think that the name of the company was well chosen, he… → Read More
Remember that time that astrologers decided that they had gotten all the zodiac signs off by one, and everyone was so bewildered because all of a sudden you were NO LONGER AN ARIES BUT A PISCES and it seemed like everything you had believed for so long was untrue.
Well the social media equivalent happened today for startup Klout and its “scores,” which purportedly give you and others an idea of… → Read More
Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on… → Read More
Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Foursquare, is now integrating Google+.
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… → Read More
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… → Read More
Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and most recently Foursquare, is adding more services today, totaling 10 different ways to measure your social influence on the web. Klout is adding five new networks—Blogger, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram and Last.fm, allowing Klout users to add their influence on these networks to their Klout score.
For… → Read More
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