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)."

Comments

A product for a problem that does not exist

[h2okies]

and will likely never will. From the last /. on this if people are hiring you based on your "klout" you should probably be looking elsewhere for a better managed place to work. If you are looking for free shit all the time then I guess a higher "Klout" score might actually be worth something to you...

Re:A product for a problem that does not exist

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You could think of Klout as performing the valuable public service of identifying the sort of people who would take Klout seriously, sort of like those chemical attractant baits used on flypaper and similar insect traps.

Never heard of Klout

[Spy Handler]

and after it disappears as many dot-coms do, you won't have to hear about it again either.

Backward News.

[SolitaryMan]

This "news" is kind of backwards. It would be news if it turned out that it *does* make any sort of sense.