Has Klout Gone Krazy? Or Just Its Users?

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Yesterday, Klout made some fairly significant changes to their influence score algorithm. Like what most startups do, they wrote up a blog post explaining their reasoning for their changes. Their reason was they wanted to make Klout scores more accurate and transparent.

Now, I’m not sure I’m buying that explanation since nowhere in that blog post is there even the slightest hint on how Klout weights certain actions and certain social networks (transparent, right?). But, that’s part of a whole different beast- and one for a future blog post.

Yet, I was more fascinated by the amount of backlash these changes caused. Based on the outrage, you would think the rapture had actually happened and/or the world had ended.

Now, I took some time to read through many of the 850+ comments and came up with a few observations.

1. Too many consultants and businesses put way too much weight on Klout scores.  

Yeah sadly, this was not an isolated comment. It makes my blood boil. Klout may be a decent tool for very beginning research. But if a consultant or business is telling you to base your success and progress on Klout, then you should fire your consultant today. It’s an irresponsible and quite frankly lazy move.

Even though Klout says they are becoming more transparent and accurate, they still haven’t published their algorithm publicly. So, we really have no idea how things are  weighted. All we can do is speculate. Not to mention, you simply can’t put a number on someone’s influence. And, the whole online v. offline influence thingie.

2. Klout is an integral part of many businesses’ social media strategies. 

If your basing your financial business’s- or any business for that matter- social media strategy largely off a free tool that makes changes on the fly often, it may be time to crack open the books and learn a few things.

3. Some jumped to conclusions through faulty, and in some cases, downright ridiculous comparisons. 

I’m not a big fan of the Biebs, but there is no denying that the kid has a ton of influence over tween and teen girls. As well as tween and teen girls’ parents. I don’t care what metrics Klout uses to determine your score, but trying to compare your Klout score to Bieber’s is never going to work in your favor.

Many others tried to compare said “unfair” Klout changes to those of Netflix. This may seem reasonable to the untrained eye. Here’s the catch. Netflix is a paid product. Klout is free to the public. When Netflix made all those unpopular changes, people could voice their outrage and then take their money elsewhere. See how this could be a problematic analogy?

4.  Too many people tie their self-worth or professional success to seemingly irrevelant scores. 

Now, this was by far the biggest complaint. And, it’s also the saddest. If you are tying your self-worth or professional success to a fairly irrevelent score, you a.) need to get a life and/or b.) you’re doing it wrong. It’s one little score, people. Stop fretting the little things, and look at the bigger picture.

5. There’s now an #OccupyKlout Twitter account and hashtag.

Shortly after Klout made their changes, this hilarious account went up. I’ll let the tweets speak for themselves. ‘Nuff said.

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Jessica Malnik

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