What Is Klout?
Have you noticed your Klout score listed next to your Username at Twitter and wondered what it was or what it meant?
Klout.com, currently a Beta, is touted as being “The Standard For Influence” and measures user metrics at a number of social networking websites including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn and assigns a score to each user. Klout scores can vary from 1 – 100 and are factored by things like how many people follow you, if you interact and converse with your connections, if your content gets retweeted or shared and other factors. It also picks up the topics that you influence people about. (For example, I am currently influential about technology and coffee.)
Klout measures 3 factors, True Reach, Amplification Probability and Network Influence.
True Reach measures the size of your engaged audience – or the number of people that you are actively engaging with. Amplification Probability measures the likelihood that your content will get spread to others through retweets or shares. Network Influence is measured by the company you keep, including the Klout scores of people that message you, the number of times you’ve been listed and other outside factors.
The best thing about Klout is that you can spread the love. If someone recently influenced you about a topic you can give 1K of Klout to them, to help them increase their influence.
Klout is about having fun, too. People that have higher Klout scores can qualify for Klout Perks like free movie screenings, sample products and special promotions.
If you’d like to learn more about Klout or how to increase your Klout score, please read this Forbes Interview with Klout CEO Joe Fernandez.
