I know I haven’t really touched much on the topic of Klout so I thought it may be time to broach the subject. At first I had my normal ‘social media blinders’ on when I heard about the new site. I don’t need another website to tell me that I’m awesome on twitter & facebook, I thought. I’ll probably just end up getting a bunch of spam and other crap… so I didn’t sign up. Fast forward a few months and I read an article saying that some recruiters are making hiring choices based on higher Klout scores. This piqued my interest and I thought I’d better check it out.
Once I got all of my accounts synced up to Klout I was pretty excited to start growing my score so I would never have to worry about Klout envy. My score grew and grew over the summer I even got to a score of 60! I was pretty impressed with myself. Then they changed something in the Klout algorithm and I dropped down to a 45! GASP – What had I done? Apparently I hadn’t screwed the proverbial pooch it was just an update to give a better score. Fine. Not happy about it, but fine. I’d gotten a few ‘Perks’ from Klout and they’re pretty cool… I was one of the first US geeks to get a Spotify account, I got some hair gel from Axe, and some business cards from Moo (which are awesome btw)!
I’m not sure how exactly the guys at Klout have written their algorithm to determine what you’re influential about; but it seems buggier than a lollipop in an ant farm! Hi I’m Dave and I’m addicted to Bacon, Hi Dave! I was doing a bit of fun research to see how hard it would be to game the klout algorithm become influential about #Bacon. I figured since I’m pretty active, and pretty much a professional smart ass, on Twitter, this would be easy. So I decided to start looking at popular Bacon goodies. Being a long time fan and customer of @ThinkGeek I figured its a good starting point. The conversation went something like this:
Now I know we’re not solving world hunger or the #occupy movement… but come on, if you have a sense of humor that’s pretty funny. Not to mention that I’m going back and forth with @ messages and ThinkGeek is a Verified account with a HUGE reach and a Klout score of 72! After reading that you must be thinking there’s some really clever bacon chat at klout. This may change after I post so I did up a screen shot below just click it to see it full sized. http://blog.klout.com/#/topic/bacon/content (this is where I was directed to see who the mighty wizard of sizzle was) only to find out this:
Sloppy paint mock up aside, this does show that Klout is not a place to get information. We still love you Google, I digress… In case you’re too lazy to click the screen shot it says: Check out the latest Buzz – Here’s some of the most influential content about Bacon in the past 90 days.
ii wish ii had some bacon
Seriously Wow… and highlighted next to it “Best Content” Really? Now some of you may think that I take my Bacon way too seriously, this post was written with tongue in cheek for the most part! I really went after the Bacon bit because, well it’s bacon… But I also wanted to illustrate a point. While everyone is focusing on how to raise their Klout Score, and be the super#1socialmediaguru take a minute and make sure the platform isn’t broken before you invest too much of your social energy into it. I honestly don’t care if I ever rank for Bacon on Klout… I do wonder however, why I’m influential about Pregnancy and Government – 2 topics I’ve never talked about on any of my social streams, yet I’m considered to be “Influential” about these topics… So, consider the source.
On a personal note, I’m cleaning up my twitter stream – if you accidentally get unfollowed DON’T PANIC! Simply @ me and say hey what gives? I’m happy to follow and talk to anyone that is a real live human being, but NO I don’t want to follow your bot. #nuffsaid.
Hi Dave, reading the benefits you have from Klaut makes me realize I need to try this. Thanks for the great share..
Diana Grant´s last [type] ..The Rainforest EC at Choa Chu Kang
LOL I’ve gamed with Klout a bit here and there, too. I have a pretty steady Klout Score of 58, and have pretty much since I signed up. But I’ve been “influential” about things I do talk about a lot. Photography, New York City, Pizza, Moms…. wait… moms? Yup. I use “mom jokes” which often get a lot of feedback from people, but I don’t do it too often on Twitter. Interesting, indeed. I’m not so sure the system is “broken” so much as just not a lot of people really linking their accounts to it. You probably noticed that most of the users measured on Klout are actually NOT Klout users, yet some of them have Klout Scores over 30, whereas Klout claims that 20 is actually the “average.” So it is measuring stuff, but only Twitter, I think, for unregistered users… Either way, I think it’s a fun “network,” especially when I get a popup telling me things like “Klout believes you are influential in Moms!!”