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Obama Finally Beats Bieber Fever According To Klout

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-got-the-cure dept.

Thanks to a change in the way their algorithm works, Klout says that President Obama is finally more influential the Justin Bieber. The company now examines more "real world" factors such as the information in your LinkedIn profile and data from Wikipedia entries. From the article: "The overhaul, which began in January, was part of the company's effort to address critics who pointed to Bieber as a prime example of why quantifying online influence was, at best, irrelevant. The teenage pop singer, with his army of 26 million Twitter followers who retweet his every word, had a Klout score that dwarfed that of the U.S. president."

4 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Missing audience profiles by mozumder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A generic number is a horrible measure.

    Ultimately, the information Klout is trying to analyze all comes down to marketing, and for that, Klout needs a specific audience to measure influence with.

    If I was running a fashion magazine targeted towards females, I would want to tell advertisers I have influence among women ages 24-45, with a certain amount of income, who are interested in shoes and bags. That's going to be different than the influence I have among male libertarian tech nerds, but unfortunately, Klout doesn't know the influence specific separate audiences (probably a billion combinations of different audience profiles), which is important now that marketers are targeting more specific niches.

  2. Statistics by mestar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Looks like they already knew the result they wanted, then they changed the algorithm until they got that result.

    1. Re:Statistics by Theophany · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, in fairness having a millions of tweens hanging on your every word is hardly 'influence' compared to, oh I don't know, being POTUS.

      Influence is as much to do with the nature of your 'followers' as the influential person themselves.

  3. This story is bad and you should feel bad. by icebraining · · Score: 5, Informative

    I can understand posting important political stories. But Obama vs Bieber on Klout? Are you serious?

    Klout is a terrible company, nothing more than a money machine from extending high school style popularity to the web, based on idiotic metrics and raking profiles without people's consent.

    Charlie Stross called them "the Internet equivalent of herpes" and that's exactly what they are. Lets not extend their influence further.

    --
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