< What Your Klout Score Really Means >
Klout score basically measures your “social media influence” based on your daily social media activities and depth of involvement. Number of friends you have on Facebook, number of “like” you get, # of tweets and retweets you receive and send, number of followers on Twitter and many other factors are used to generate your scores. A higher score you have, stronger your voice and presence on internet.
The interesting part is that this score starts to have a greater impact on your offline life. Marketers and companies will look over your Klout score, and distribute coupons or special discounts based on it. Job recruiters will review your Klout score, and won’t hire you if you have a low score. According to the article, Mr. Fiorella, who has 15 years of working experience in marketing field, didn’t get a job because his score is not high enough.
Honestly,I’m not a big fan of Klout Score for several reasons.I don’t think the score can be reliable because I doubt that “social influence” can be measured numerically. This social media ranking technology didn’t develop any standard mathematical or technological algorithm to rank people using their online activities. Justine Bieber has a higher Klout score than Obama. Also, I don’t want my online activities are monitored. But the scary part of Klout score is that, even though I don’t want to be on their profile, if one of my Facebook friends are using Klout score, I’m automatically on Klout database.
I think our social media system has been developed through our self-motivation. We’ve using social media because we like to create and share things. However, once we know that we will be discriminated, social media becomes an obligation. I believe everyone understands how it feels different when your post birthday pictures for homework and for your friends.
I think <Filter bubble> and Klout score share alot of similar issues on targeted advertising, discrimination based on online activity and privacy issues.
Please share your thoughts on this issue. If you find positive aspects of Klout score, I’d love to hear it !
Wow! Thanks for sharing this topic. I am actually hearing about Klout for the first time and I think it is completely wrong of companies to use such scores when looking to hire employees.
It is disturbing to know that a person who spends majority of his time in front of the computer warming his seat, trying to ‘friend’ strangers, has a competitive edge over a person who actually limits his facebook circle to his friends and families and spends his time doing something more productive. I must then be wrong in not accepting all the creepy facebook friend requests, as I am obstructing myself from creating a larger network for myself. Ridiculous!
In the end, should I advise my little cousin to start a facebook at a young age, so that she can start working on her online image from a young age?
Very interesting, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this before. I would say that this is definitely relevant to Pariser’s book because of what a Klout influenced web will become. If everyone has to tweet every 30 minutes in order to achieve their maximum Klout score, then there will be a mass of information on the web even bigger than what we deal with today. There will be greater needs for personalization, because our attention windows will need to be even more focused.
I hope that Klout scores will stick to being used to give people freebies rather than punishing those who don’t have high scores. People who do have a lot of influence on social media should be able to capitalize on it, and get some perks. However, just because someone isn’t retweeted by celebrities every day should not count against them when qualifying for jobs. Like the author said at the end, there is no correlation between something being popular and something being interesting.
wow i really just checked out this whole Klout thing, and my reaction is WTF?!? apparently my score is 51….uhm and whatever that means apparently its not very high, it actually is a bit absurd as to how irrelevant that score may be to your ability to complete work related tasks and communicate with coworkers on a daily basis. Extremely annoyed with this concepts and frankly very happy that my boss finds facebook completely distracting and doesn’t care much about who is on it. Our work policy is that if your facebook has inappropriate content then don’t link yourself as an employee at the company, otherwise it doesn’t really matter. I cant imagine a company other than one with social media that would care about Klout.
In other words, lets keep out fingers crossed that Klout does not survive for very long -_-
I dislike the idea of using Klout score to determine if candidates meet standards for jobs or other opportunities. For one, having a high Klout score doesn’t mean that you have any signficant social influence that can actually produce a substantive change in society. Meaning, people may follow you because you have something they like or desire, but over time you will become just another fad. I also think the only instituions that would seriously consider Klout score as important data would be firms that operate within the scope of social media. If a person is being followed by thousands or even millions of viewers they would contribute to the goals of a marketing firm, but again, how long would it be before there is another new face.
My advice is for people to not get caught up with Klout Score as a means to achieve opportunity, rather get an education or invent something. Because that is the only way to make yourself marketable after the fad or trend has past.
I like that you mentioned this. The one good thing for you is that your klout score can be purchased. You can buy twitter followers and likes and most all aspects that get factored into your klout score. It makes sense that justin B has a higher klout score then Obama because Obama does not regularly use social media. Klout score only measures social media influence not real world power/ influence for that we can stick to Forbes and Obama is number 1 and Justin B is pretty far down that list. It’s all about relevance. What is most relevant to the company? For an advertising agency owned by elders who do not fully understand social media and how it works, I can totally understand why they would not hire an individual with a low klout score if they have been told that’s what is going to be best for the company. Consultants have been misguiding ad agencies recently and this is because no one really knows how impactful social media is. There is no way to measure how successful or unsuccesful it is all we can do is blindly argue one way or the other. How in the past a company could take out an ad in the New York Times and see how their activity changed the following week. Now that ads are spread out in so many different mediums it is impossible to know where the attention is comming from.
The idea of the klout score to me is just another way of discrimination. its like saying you didn’t get this job position because you are not friends with Kim Kardashian or you do not have 1000 facebook friends. If employers are recruiting based on this score, perhaps they should have their score analyzed as well (to be fair). I’m quite surprised such a concept exists. I believe the klout score became what it is because of the mentality of social media sites. Facebook and twitter users generally want more friends and followers respectively, and to most of them, its like an achievement. For example Youtube users can subscribe to channels. Currently the #1 Youtube channel with the highest subscription is Smosh with over 8 Million subscribers. Numbers matter on youtube, and I believe it stirs competition for other channels to try their hardest to pool in more subscribers. So like twitter having thousands of followers gives you a sense of accomplishment, while it may not be for beneficial for society, it makes you as a person feel like you are of some value (based on your Klout). Anyhow, this Klout score should be disregarded, and thrown into the trash bin when recruiters are looking to hire, because positions should be filled based on merit and experience, not on how popular you are in relation to the person next to you.