Why Klout's Social Influence Scores Are Nonsense

jfruh writes "Klout is a new social media service that attempts to quantify how much 'influence' you have, based on your social media profile. Their metrics are bizarre — privacy blogger Dan Tynan has been rated as highly influential on the topic of cigars, despite having only smoked one, decades ago. Nevertheless, Klout scores have real-world consequences, with people deemed influential getting discounts on concert tickets or free access to airport VIP lounges (in hopes that they'll tweet about it, presumably)."

XKCD!

[Anonymous Coward]

XKCD says it all!
http://xkcd.com/1057/

My Klout score

[Anonymous Coward]

OK I'll check it out.
tappity tappity ENTER

KLOUT "Sign in" with Twitter (don't have) or Facebook (don't have) ....and I'm over it.

I'm also bothered by misspelling Kommon words for effekt.

Re:A product for a problem that does not exist

[mozumder]

There's definitely a "nerd-centric" influence for klout. It really measures online activity more than real-world influence. A big problem with it is that it doesn't account for non-measurable factors, such as power and art direction. In the industry I'm in, fashion, art direction determines your overall influence . And its editors figure out who have the best art direction, since the public trusts their editing skills more than computer algorithms.

And you don't even need to be on the internet to be taken seriously. Karl Lagerfeld doesn't use the web- he still sends "email" via fax machines. The top fashion magazines barely have usable websites, yet they'll always remain far more influential than any blogger ever will, because Klout can't actually measure influence, because, again, computers are never going to be able to replace human editors at that.

Klout really is fundamentally doomed. Klout can only work as a paid service if they can hire paid & specialized editors that measure influence of each property, which is an expensive business plan.

The bigger problem I see is that too many Venture Capitalists are trying to find cheap computer profits to problems only solvable by expensive human experts. Sorry Venture Capitalist, it's just not going to happen. Go back to making money the old-fashioned way, by earning it.

Re:A product for a problem that does not exist

[hairyfish]

We're nearly the same age. When I was10 I had flared jeans and a tight shirt with rainbow colours, When I was 13 or 14 I bought some tapered jeans and a black t-shirt. By Uni I had traded these for baggy jeans and a white t-shirt, and just recently I bought some skinny jeans and t-shirt with some writing on it. I expect sometime in the next 10 years to probably get some baggy jeans again and maybe a new t-shirt. I think this is what they mean by fashion :)