Is Klout Worth Really Worth It?

This is the fourth post in the Social Influence Series.  If you’ve missed a past post, a listing of the previous posts are listed at the end of this post.

Ask anyone about Klout and you will get A LOT of reaction.  It’s one of those things you either love or hate.  There’s no in between.

Want my opinion?  I love it.

Next week I’ll be talking about to measure social influence, so don’t get all up in arms.  I believe Klout is just one component in that formula.

Klout, to me, is like a game.  The more active you are on certain platforms, the higher your score.  My score stays between 74 and 77.  I am proud of that.  My score is higher than some of the social media juggernauts out there.

Klout calculates your score based on your activity on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Klout itself.  They do factor in some smaller platforms but those four are the biggies.  They actually break down (in the circle below) how much of your activity goes into scoring.  See mine below:

My breakdown of activity:
Facebook: 48.84%
Twitter: 34.27%
LinkedIn: 7.08%
Klout: 5.28%
Google+: 4.5%

Now, the actual formula of how they calculate is a mystery to everyone except those who programmed it.  That is the big problem with Klout.  No one knows it or understands it.  I have some suspicion on a chunk of it, but more on that later.

People are starting to take notice of Klout. Klout gives you perks based on how you score on your topics.  Recently, a friend of mine received a perk to go meet Ben Affleck at the premiere of his new movie in New York City.  The biggest news of late is that Microsoft is now investing in Klout and I’ve heard a rumor that another big influential business that I can’t name (sorry, it’s not public, so I can’t say) is looking to invest too.

What does the Microsoft investment mean? Well, first of all Microsoft is going to include people’s Klout scores into their Bing search engine so your score will be out there for everyone to see (even if you’re not aware of it).  Second, and most importantly, it signals that maybe there is something to Klout after all.

Will the Microdoft investment pay off?  Maybe.
Will Klout become so mainstream that it influences things in our daily lives?  We will see.

Klout has it’s fair share of critics and even though I love Klout, I’m included in that lot. Before they changed the formula, my score jumped 3 points in one day because 300 people posted on my Facebook wall for my birthday.  Now that they’ve reworked the formula, it’s more even.

In the end, yes, I do think Klout is worth it.  It’s one component of many that people are looking at to measure social influence and some industries are even using it in screening job candidates (crazy, I know).

What do you think?  I want to know if you think Klout is worth it.

Oh, want to know about that suspicion I mentioned earlier?  I’m not going to tell it all here, but let me say this, make sure you are active on Google+ 🙂

Previous Social Influence Posts:
An Introduction to Klout & Kred
A Tour of Klout
A Tour of Kred