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 can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a Blockwatch, post general observations about the neighborhood, ask their neighbors questions, and post pictures of lost and found items. Basically, the app is focused on creating a community within real neighborhood. → 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 grow your user base, is there a best way to cost-effectively attract valuable users? I’m increasingly convinced the best way is by harnessing a concept called social proof, a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web.
What is social proof? Put simply, it’s the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something. It’s also known as informational social influence. → 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 mocked them with the insincerest form of flattery, and perhaps most damning of all–it’s one thing to be controversial, another and far worse to be irrelevant–our own Alexia Tsotsis convincingly argued that “Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score.”
Why all the hate? Stross cites privacy violations, but it can’t be that alone which inspires such vitriol. As Mathew Ingram points out, “it’s hard to see why Klout should be criticized for collecting information about people based on their public web activity.” Scalzi gets more to the heart of things: “Klout exists to turn the entire Internet into a high school cafeteria, in which everyone is defined by the table at which they sit.” Oh noes! It’s an online popularity contest! Stone them!
Let me offer a different take: Klout, as flawed and clumsy as it is–and I’ll admit that in many ways it’s a terrible service–is an admirable pioneer, a first innovative step in an important direction. → 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 out.
Personally, I’m not too worried about Facebook leaving money on the table, or how Netflix suddenly validated a ton of value with their supposed social mistake. Instead I see an ever-expanding set of social services creating new opportunities for sharing realtime hints about what we will find interesting and valuable just in time. Oh, and Twitter just keeps on rocking. Now back to my movie, @Mention Matinee with nobody you have heard of yet. → 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 told me the story of how he obtained the domain name klout.com. Since I have a huge interest in that type of small behind-the-scenes story – and in domain names – I loved it and found it interesting enough to be worth sharing here. → 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 your social media influence on various topics. → 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 SecondMarket, up 49 percent from the second quarter.
Who is buying all of these shares? SecondMarket breaks it out in its third quarter report. Wealthy “accredited individuals” made up the largest share of buyers (63 percent by dollar amount), followed by asset managers (22.3 percent of transactions), hedge funds (7.8 percent), and venture capital funds (5.1 percent). VC funds became much more active on SecondMarket in the quarter, accounting for 17.5 percent of the transactions by number. Last quarter, VCs made up less than 1 percent of transactions (and only 0.2 percent by dollar amount). → 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 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 750 million-plus users. → 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 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. → 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 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 nearly 700 million users.
→ Read More
Music service Spotify has finally arrived in the U.S. In case you haven’t heard, Spotify has made its free version invite-only, but you can access the music service now if you shell out $4.99 or $9.99 per month. If you don’t want to pay for Spotify, and don’t have an invite in your inbox, don’t worry. There’s always Klout Perks.
Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, has a limited number of free Spotify account invitations to pass out via its Klout Perks. Klout Perks are exclusive offers or experiences, given as a result of your Klout. → Read More
Social marketing platform Involver is partnering with Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, to allow brands to interact with and reward their fans on Facebook based on their Klout score.
Basically, Involver allows brands to create a Klout widget on their Facebook page that engages users to measure their Klout score. Brands can then see which of their users have the most influence on Facebook and the social web, and reward users for signing-up and/or interacting with the brand. And brands can see which fans have Klout in their particular product area. → Read More
Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter and Facebook, is expanding its product today with the addition of LinkedIn. With the launch of Klout scoring for LinkedIn, you’ll be able to add your LinkedIn account to your Klout score and see your influence on the professional social network network itself.
For background, Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals on social networks. → Read More
A New York City startup that provides small businesses with a social media dashboard, Postling, is rolling out three new features this week. They are meant to help small business owners see who their company’s most influential advocates are on social media; and get actionable ideas from brands that are doing a good job of using social media already.
Using Klout’s reputation monitoring, Postling will now present users with information about their latest follower(s) on Twitter. If anyone highly influential — from Lady Gaga to Ron Conway — follows your company, Postling founder and chief executive David Lifson reasons, you may want to write a personalized thank you to them, and follow them back immediately— even if you don’t usually take the time to interact with every follower your business gains… → Read More
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. → Read More
Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, has hit a significant milestone today—2,000 developers using the startup’s API. That’s up from 250 developers last year.
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. → Read More
What’s the Next Big Thing after social networking?
This has been a favorite topic of much speculation among tech enthusiasts for many years. I think we are already witnessing a paradigm shift – a move away from simple social sharing towards personalized, relevant content.
The key element of the next big thing is the increasing significance of the Interest Graph to complement the Social Graph. While Facebook, Twitter, and Google are already working on delivering relevant content, a slew of startups are focusing exclusively on it. → Read More
So now Klout has a trove of cash and some big name investors. Add to that it’s solving a problem plenty of brands desperately want someone– someone other than random social media “experts”– to solve.
But can true influence actually be measured by algorithms, especially algorithms that people can’t find a way to game? And if it can be measured, what is it really worth? What’s the street value of a retweet? Isn’t there something about removing the friction of word-of-mouth referrals that inherently lessen the value of them?
Klout founder and CEO Joe Fernandez does a decent job of convincing me in the clip below that Klout may indeed be on to something big. More important: He’s convinced his team and Kleiner Perkins and Greycroft Partners.
If you’re still a skeptic too, watch the video below. → Read More
Klout’s funding news this morning was quickly drowned out by Square’s funding and then both were drowned out by Groupon’s gargantuan round.
But for Klout, the funding round was pretty significant. In raising a surprisingly large $8.5 million, the company was singling its decision not to take a flip and to try to build a big company out of measuring influence online. For Klout founder and CEO Joe Fernandez, it’s a human version of page rank and the opportunity can be just as big.
Fernandez stopped by TechCrunch to talk about the inside drama of the round, including the team’s wrestling over whether to flip-or-not, whose money to take and what all that cash will be used for.
In a future segment, we dive into my concern: Can influence online really be accurately measured? → Read More
Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, has raised $8.5 million in new funding led by the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer recently launched sFund with participation from Greycroft Partners. Angel investors, including ff Asset Management, Paige Craig, Howard Lindzon, Thomas McInerney, Bobby Yazdani, Shervin Pishevar, and others also participated in the round. This investment brings Klout’s funding to more than $10 million. Kleiner partner Bing Gordon will join Klout’s board of directors.
Klout, which markets itself as a “standard for influence” on the web, 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 500 million-plus users. → Read More
