Why I do not care about your Klout Score

Social Media Influence
Social Media Influence (Photo credit: Intersection Consulting)

More than a year ago,  I learnt about Klout and being a fan of anything new on the web, I dashed to their website & registered instantly. At that time, it was quite surprising that someone can measure your social influence which they called it as ‘Klout Score’. I was in for more surprise when in following weeks my scores jumped from 40’s to almost 60 out of the maximum 100. But then came the moment, they tweaked their measurement algorithms & my score dropped to less than half. That gave rise to my earlier post on Klout and my notion to ‘not care about your Klout Score’.

Assuming, Klout has since matured & with competition from the likes of Kred and PeerIndex, they would have added few more tweaks to their algorithm to gain more attention toward themselves. At the point of writing this, Klout claims to have scored more than a 100 million people and get about 30 billion API calls per month. That indeed is a huge number, but since the fiasco, my interest in Klout has remain more or less the same, as I always took the Klout scores of the person with a grain of salt.

Here are my 3 reason’s for not taking your Klout score seriously

1. Klout can be GAMED

Yes, at the end of the day, the measurement system of Klout is basically a program with a set of algorithm. Once you know few of the components of this algorithm, it becomes easy for anyone to game the system. And, I have seen many of them do that. Hence, that the number one reason for me to not believe the score, because if you hardly see the person’s presence on the web and has a high score, there’s something amiss.

2. Scores can change

Again, since it’s just a tool, the team at Klout can change the algorithm anytime to suit their marketing efforts. Remember, they are now competing against Kred & PeerIndex and the competition does boil down to the number of users. So what you may see is the change in your Klout scores which actually might not actually be as a result of your being on vacation or were engaging more on the social platforms.

3. It’s just not you!!

Few days back, I had noted that Warren Buffett has a Klout score of 35. Justin Beiber’s had 100. Who do you think really has the most clout? For me, I have either followed or engaged with you because I loved the way you write or we follow the same school of thoughts. It might really not make a difference for me to check on your Klout score since I have already got interested in the YOU. Klout or for that matter any of the influence measurement tools will not look at the power of your content since they just measure your presence on the web. Is that what really being social is about?? So, I would suggest you invest more of your time to write valuable content, rather than having sound bytes across multiple social platforms. If not, you might fade away as soon as your presence becomes less on the those platforms, but if you have been dishing great content, it’ll remain around for a longer time.

What do you think?? If you really bother about the scores, mine stands at 53 as of writing this post. And well, you know I am not judging you by your score. Do you really fret about the score & invest your time building them? If they are important for you, do share reasons why Klout score is so important.

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