• June 14th, 2011

    Klout Expands Influence Scoring To Professional Social Network LinkedIn

    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

    June 2nd, 2011

    Postling Rolls Out New "Suggestion" Features To Help Small Biz Owners Master Social Media

    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

    May 16th, 2011

    Klout Nabs Former Yahoo Data And Analytics VP To Lead Engineering

    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

    April 13th, 2011

    Social Influence Measurement Startup Klout Passes 2K API Partners

    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

    March 3rd, 2011

    The Age Of Relevance

    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

    January 10th, 2011

    Can Klout Actually Measure Real-Life Clout? (TCTV)

    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

    January 10th, 2011

    Klout CEO: We Made the Decision to Go for It (TCTV)

    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

    January 10th, 2011

    Klout Lands $8.5 Million From Kleiner Perkins And Greycroft To Measure Social Influence

    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

    October 13th, 2010

    Facebook Now Has Klout

    Klout, startup that measures influence on Twitter, is extending its influence measurement product to Facebook today. While the company previously offered BirdBrain, a feature that discovers new Twitter followers based on Facebook interests; Klout is combining influence on both Facebook and Twitter into one metric.

    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. Klout looks at specific achievements on the network, including total comments, total likes, unique likers, and unique commenters. Klout will analyze this data and show users how many likes they have per post, the number of unique commenters and more. → Read More

    April 28th, 2010

    Klout Raises $1.5 Million To Measure Influence And Authority On Twitter

    Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, has secured $1.5 million in Series A funding from a number of investors, including Allen Morgan of Mayfield Fund, ff Asset Management, Bobby Yazdani, Nova Spivack of Lucid Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Paige Craig, Tom McInerney, Michael Yavonditte of Quigo Technologies, and Ofer Ronen.

    Klout, which recently released a new API, evaluates Twitter users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals and topics around the web. Since the company’s launch in 2008, Klout has registered over 250,000 users and over 300 API partners, including CoTweet, HootSuite, and the newly-launched Tweetup, and is handling millions of API calls a day. → Read More

    April 15th, 2010

    PeerIndex plans to build a DNA profile of your expertise

    Viewsflow appeared in the last few months as a sort of high-brow filtering mechanism for Twitter users. It’s majored on finding the best people who tweet about Peak Oil, or China’s economy, for instance. It’s been producing quite a nice little daily newsletter full of the kinds of links you’d expect more from an editor on The Economist or The Atlantic Monthly. And that’s precisely the point. If you can work out who really knows their stuff on Twitter, you can get some great knowledge and insight, right?

    The realtime nature of the stream lends itself well to the coming world (which may already have arrived?) where we start to make trading decisions based on the data we can pull from social networks. This is well known as a discussion.

    Now, like many startups, now Viewsflow has stumbled on its real business. In around June/July it’ll be launching PeerIndex, a data play based on the algorithms it developed building Viewsflow. → Read More

    April 13th, 2010

    Twitter Influence Authority Klout Releases New Version Of API

    Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, is releasing a new version of its API today. Klout’s API is currently being used by more than 250 companies, including CoTweet, HootSuite, and the newly-launched Tweetup. You can read our previous coverage of Klout here.

    Klout’s API, which is free, can be used by developers to identify the Twitter users they need to connect with to spread word about a new product, by publishers to understand how influential their audience is, and to help marketers and advertisers helping target influencers within your a particular market. The new API now allows users to return a Twitter user’s “True Reach”, “Amplification Score” and “Network nScore” as well as a machine learning classification of the type of user a person is (Connector, Persona). Basically, the API gives third-party users a much richer insight into influencers’ behaviors. → Read More

    November 17th, 2009

    With Klout Comes Influence: Measuring And Modifying List Authority on Twitter

    San Francisco-based Klout is no stranger to measuring influence on the Social Web. The company launched at SXSW Interactive 2009 to help Twitter users discover the voices that the world listens to (on Twitter anyway). Essentially, Klout measures influence at the topical level, sorting individuals who demonstrate the ability to drive action within respective social graphs when discussing particular subjects.

    Today, Klout is announcing its most significant release to date. In addition to measuring authority on Twitter, the company is releasing a new, intelligent Twitter List engine that identifies and ranks the top 25 influencers for any topic of interest and produces a new, qualified, and ranked list as a result. → Read More

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