Klout Lands $8.5 Million From Kleiner Perkins And Greycroft To Measure Social Influence
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.
The company also offers an API, which has become popular among social media applications to give users a picture of how influential Twitter and Facebook users are. As of last year, over 1250 startups were using Klout’s API.
Klout says that it will use the new funding to hire more engineers and to add more services beyond Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to the Klout algorithm.