The plus side is that Klout is so bad at measuring anything approximating influence that it's more of a scam than a real problem in the sense that this post fears (at least currently). It's a really lazily computed metric that's not validated against anything at all. Given an hour, HN users could probably come up with a dozen still-imperfect but less stupid metrics, and maybe some sort of start at a validation approach. But in the world of clueless social-media-marketing execs, they're able to sell it to people who are even more clueless than themselves. I hope that continues for now at least. =]

>Klout is so bad at measuring anything approximating influence that it's more of a scam than a real problem

>they're able to sell it to people who are even more clueless than themselves.

That's why it's a problem! Those clueless people use it for hiring decisions, or other stupid reasons.

Clueless people use lots of stupid things for hiring decisions. Which is great, because I don't want to work for clueless people...

Whoa! Hiring decisions? Really? It's like so much of dependence on some third party.

Do you have any reference to companies doing so?

If anything, that could serve as a good qualitative metric for filtering out eventual employers/clients.

I Googled for my Twitter handle and Klout after reading this, and what bugs me the most is this bit in the Google snippet:

"Andrew Johnson is on Klout."

Which implies that I have joined the site. If this were some pornography site, they'd have a lawsuit on their hands.

It sort of is... it's ego-pornography

Interesting… IANAL but I could (would love to) see a defamation suit there, as-is. “Klout makes me look like a douchebag, Your Honor.”

The author doesn't even touch on what I find (potentially) most odious: that big companies could use Klout data to discriminate for/against certain customers.

    def process_complaint
      if self.user.klout > 40
        self.user.send_gift_certificate(100.00)
      else
        self.destroy
      end
    end
    
    def answer_phone
      if caller_id.user.klout > 50
        self.move_to_front_of_queue
      end
    end

Klout already has arrangements with third-parties to offer perks to influential users. (I don't see anything wrong with that, personally.)

Free stuff to influential people are fine.

What callmeed fears is that businesses will use klout score to create a public appearance of good service, without actually providing good service.

This is similar to the complaint 37 Signals had with Get Satisfaction: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else

If you're interested in more thoughtful commentary regarding Klout or online influence, I highly suggest my friend Tom's blog: http://brandsavant.com.

"My Klout is equal to Snooki’s. There isn’t a party, gathering or room in the world in which I would be equally influential to Snooki. There’s a good thought exercise for you."

http://brandsavant.com/on-klout-bashing/

This is typical of the misinformation in the recent Klout backlash. Their long game is not about a single number that places you higher or lower than Snooki. it's about which communities you influence, and how much.

Why do they publicize that number, then? If anything, it seems like the misinformation is coming from Klout. It's the thing they tout on their front page, display prominently on the logged in page, etc.

It's becoming a tenet that digital identity and influence is everything going forwards.

What if the opposite happens? - it becomes fashionably alternative for kids to renounce social, always connected devices and online generally - and completely switch off.

Sometimes it feels like some of the things we're building make that more likely.

Some of my friends have completely skipped creating an online identity. They just never really got around to it, and so never have.

Sometimes I think that was the correct choice to make. I don't think it was a 'choice' at the time, as in 'I don't want my details online' but rather 'I can't be bothered, there's nothing in it for me'. But now, having got this far, they now don't get caught up in the endless indexing and data sharing that happens without consent.

I have a feeling that will be a lot like not having a home phone, TV and mail service would have been in the 80s.

Tv(with no Nielsen surveys/monitoring), phone(with no dinner marketing calls) and mail(with no catalogs or AOL cds) works wonderfully. Let me pay for my services and be a hermit. I understand not everyone wants to pay for services and having that choice is great. Not everything has to be social.

There is something about having a private company controlling reputation on the web that's quite disturbing to many.

And while I don't think your average HN reader places much importance in Klout scores as a measure of reputation and influence, mass media outlets are certainly starting to.

No transparency, quantity over quality, higher scores the more personal data you fork over -- this is all movement in the wrong direction.

Google is a private company that controls your site's reputation via PageRank -- assuming most of us have a personal site/blog, how is this that much different?

While it's true that Google is in a sense a gatekeeper to people's personal sites, it doesn't claim to be an arbiter of your page's (or your) reputation. Rather, it only claims to be a judge of a page's relevance to the terms a user searches on.

Google absolutely is an arbiter of your page's reputation -- you can see the 0-9 logarithmic scale on Google's Toolbar.

In the early days of Google/PageRank, the SEO world was abuzz with talk of Google's reputation score for each website, and everyone eagerly awaited the Google update to see how the scores changed.

Part of relevance is a query-agnostic reputation score.

I stand corrected. I still think it's fair to say that the public doesn't view Google as an arbiter of a page's reputation, though as you say they are certainly aiming to be this.

At least Google will remove you easily if you request it (via your robots.txt file).

I've got to disagree here. For one, Klout is a step in the direction of creating a metric to help brand marketers determine who are the most valuable people to target (i.e. "influencers"). It's not perfect but it's better than nothing from a marketing perspective.

On the other hand, if people just happen to get wrapped up in what their Klout is because they are ego-driven, then so be it.

> It's not perfect but it's better than nothing from a marketing perspective.

From some spot-checking of Klout scores of people I know, I'm not sure it's better than just a raw follow count. The number is really bizarre. For example, one of my friends who never uses Twitter, has a dozen or so tweets and 2 followers, and generally isn't active elsewhere in social media either, inexplicably has a fairly high Klout score. I'm guessing some sort of issue with normalization or small data sets.

I'm not saying there isn't value being created for marketers (though others might), I'm merely saying Klout as the go-to source for reputation on the web could have negative societal implications.

>There is something about having a private company controlling reputation on the web that's quite disturbing to many.

They don't control reputation, they control Klout Score. The degree to which people associate that with reputation is the degree to which Klout is providing (or appearing to provide) value.

The degree to which people conflates the two is a matter of marketing, not value.

Either is sufficient.

You are not the customer. You are not a shareholder. You're not even a user. So why should they care what you think of them? They're using your (very) public data to provide value to their actual users. I don't think that's such an odious idea.

It's odious because they refuse to remove info about you if you ask them to. There is no legal obligation to, but most people believe that they should respond to user requests

1. It is not a user request, because you are not a user. The real users want your data. So they have it.

2. It's not personal information. It's your twitter handle and some info about your "network" that anyone can get from the Twitter API.

Is my name on it?

Yes?

Then it's personal information, and those "real users" can go screw.

A phrase that I read here a while ago has stuck with me: "There's no way for you to opt-out of people talking about you on the Internet".

Klout is just a (lame) algorithm talking about you on the Internet.

There is a way to opt-out of people aggregating and making available informstion about you. Especially in Europe.

I don't know if the European privacy laws would apply to freely offered public information such as the stuff a person has on their public twitter profile. I always assumed it was for things like personally identifiable data that you gather through other means (e.g. a user signs up on your site directly).

The idea of people having an expectation of privacy in a broadcast medium feels preposterous to me.

Hardly. If you publish a book and someone publishes figures on how many books have been sold, or how many people have mentioned your book in reviews - that's not personal information. I don't see Klout as being any different. (mind you I agree that Klout metrics are completely meaningless - but that's a separate point)

If you don't want people talking about you on the internet, don't get on the internet and do things that are publicly connected to your name.

This isn't specific to the internet. This is how the meat world works.

Klout is not "people." Klout is an incredibly obnoxious service that scrapes Twitter for information. (Topsy is another one.) People who want to be validated by their terrible little company may choose to do so. I do not, and any halfway reputable company would honor the request to be removed from their listings.

The bigger problem, of course, is that they assert that I "[am] on Klout," when I damned well am not. A page that they have scraped from services that actually provide meaningful value has information about me on it, but I am not "on" their site in any meaningful way. They co-opt my online presence (not that it's worth much) to attempt to drive my acquaintances to use their service, when their service isn't even one I use.

But, y'know. Ignoring the people whose data you're scraping and lying about their use of your service is just real ingenious hustling, or...something. I've lost track of the various ways people excuse terrible behavior like this from trendy companies.

Be that as it may, there's only one person responsible for the fact that your information is being used in this way: you.

If you left all your possessions in the middle of the nearest town, would it surprise you if they were stolen? Of course we want to live in a world where that doesn't happen but the reality is that we don't. If you don't want people to abuse your personal information, don't make your personal information public.

That ranks highly among the more perverse cases of refusal to blame the people actually doing wrong that I've ever seen. How about some blame for the douchebags actually doing something wrong? It bears no resemblance whatsoever to "don't leave your things unattended"; in this profession it is essentially impossible not to have an online presence of some significance and that does not mean that some two-bit rectum of a startup has the right to claim that I am "on" their little website (clearly and dishonestly intimating that I am using it).

You are not entitled to use my information to push your service unless I agree to allow you to do so (for example, by virtue of using your service). This just isn't that complex.

If your information were private, then yes there would be an invasion of privacy here. However, the information is not private because you've deliberately made it public. By definition you can't complain about an invasion of your privacy when you've surrendered it.

This is not to say that I'm a fan of Klout - quite the contrary - but to give away information and then expect to be able to control how it's used is, sadly, unrealistic. As I said, we may wish there weren't such people in the world, but there are, and we have to take responsibility for looking after our own interests rather than hoping some faceless third party will do it for us.

But my understand here is that this is being allowed via Twitter. Twitter is knowingly allowing this to take place, and by agreeing to Twitter's ToS, you are in effect, allowing this to happen. Essentially, what I see this as, is you not agreeing to Twitter freely sharing your information the way it does. So maybe instead of being angry with Klout, who has permission from Twitter to do this, you should be angry with Twitter, and revoke your permission in using your information?

Twitter gives them access to my public timeline. That's fine. If they had a shred of decency they'd remove users who ask them to, and they clearly don't, but whatever. The bigger problem, and one that has nothing whatsoever to do with Twitter exposing this information, is the morally bankrupt turds at Klout asserting that I am using their service when I am not. They have plausible deniability, in the sense that "on" can refer to their harebrained 'analysis' of my timeline, but it's obvious that that's not their intended meaning.

EDIT: There's an argument that Klout is possibly violating Twitter's Terms of Service, too:

C. Your Service should not:

...

impersonate or facilitate impersonation of others in a manner that can mislead, confuse, or deceive users.

I'm pretty sure that "look, this person you know is 'on' Klout!" when I have and desire no relationship with their service would fall under this category (or would if Twitter actually enforced such rules, which it doesn't appear they do). "But we just say 'on' to mean 'we have some stuff about them!'" is unacceptable. Doubly so when they won't stop when asked. But user abuse seems to be endemic to the "social" industry, so while I'm kind of pissed, I'm not surprised.

First, don't confuse me with someone defending Klout. I'm not.

> Twitter gives them access to my public timeline. That's fine.

> There's an argument that Klout is possibly violating Twitter's Terms of Service, too

See, if Twitter gives them permission to do something, and they do it, then they have permission to do it. It's sleazy in how they do it, but, as you say: whatever.

Here is the unfortunate thing. Twitter is allowing them to do this. Klout has permission. And, by using Twitter, you are in a sense giving Klout permission as well, through that nefarious ToS.

You want to use Twitter? A part of using Twitter is allowing them to provide your information to Klout. There is nothing to say you have to use Twitter. There are other options out there.

A lot of this seems to be entitlement-driven. You want something for free, but you dislike the terms. You are allowed to disagree with those terms, but don't misplace the blame here.

You gave Twitter certain permissions. Twitter then uses those permissions and does with it what it will, which results in allow Klout to do what it will (and don't for a minute think that Twitter's public ToS is the only ToS). You've given your permission. It strikes me as wrong to attack Klout, who has Twitter's permission, and by extension, yours.

Complain if you will, but understand that Twitter is at the centre of this. If you complain about Klout and leave Twitter blameless, you're being dishonest.

If you can't agree to the ToS, don't use the service.

Again, this is crazy-talk. Twitter themselves says that Klout can't misrepresent that I am "on" their service. But they are.

And, no, sorry, there are no other alternatives to Twitter. Literally zero. I mean, really--identi.ca? Don't make me laugh.

Is your name on it? I thought it only pulled info from your twitter page, unless your Facebook friends gave it access to their friends list. In which case it's information from their users and not really information they harvested from you.

Berlusconi thinks the same thing.

I long for the days of an actual reputation system (like what cstross described in Accelerando), and I suppose in that regard, Klout is making progress.

I'd be happier if their system was based on some sort of actual reality, but hopefully they'll figure that out in time.

I don't have an "account" with them, but I saw my Klout score displayed from a Twitter app and it said I was influential about "Argentina". Never been; don't know anything about it; never mentioned anything about it in a conversation.

I actually want a useful reputation system to take hold so I can implement it in sorting messages. I've been working on an "interestingness filter" (where spam is just considered the least interesting of all), and would love to be able to say: "This email refers to topic 'X', and this sender is considered to be reputable about that topic, so I'll score this message higher than I might have otherwise."

When I worked at Spock we had pretty much the same policy. Spock mined everything it could, including corporate bios, news articles, phone directories, etc. It wasn't deeply thought out; we just didn't have time to work it out fully.

There was a time when people were regularly upset and surprised at what search engines came across. It's not that the data are public, but how they are collated and presented. Over time a balance was struck, mostly in favor of the search engines.

I'm not sure what the right balance is here. At the very least there should be some sort of opt-out in the same manner as robots.txt or removing yourself from Facebook search results.

Where are these two billion API calls to Klout's servers coming from? Are CRM systems really doing a lookup on people's Klout score when triaging a call?

"we served more than two billion API calls in the month of June."

http://corp.klout.com/blog/2011/07/two-billion-is-cool/

Gnip, the authorized re-seller of Twitter's stream, includes Klout scores as part of its augmented stream. I'm guessing a bulk of those 2B calls are from that.

But yes, MANY social CRMs are using Klout scores for ... I don't know what, but they are.

So does Datasift.

OT: man do I hate it when companies tout meaningless business metrics as a measure of achievement. Two billion API calls might be cool, but $2b in revenue would be a lot cooler.

What I found amusing was the outpouring of emotion last week when the Klout algorithm changed and peoples scores dropped.

Now I can understand, first hand, the drama that a Google ranking change involves, because it can mean real changes in revenue.

But a Klout score? I'd be surprised if anyone can find an example where a drop in Klout score equated to a drop in anything else except the recipients ego inflation.

As I dryly suggested to someone, maybe they should ask Klout for a refund if they don't like their new score.

As a statistic, it's something I have because other people seem to find it important, but I don't particularly care. Same as Google rankings - I don't care about PR, I care about traffic volumes and conversion rates. I couldn't care if I had a PR of zero as long as I got targeted and qualified traffic.

I've always seen Klout as a laughable site, somebody's pipe dream that he could somehow, through an algorithm, classify everyone on the Internet. Google has been working on that for data and hasn't even succeeded yet. But when reading these articles, like how Klout is making profiles for everyone it finds, including kids, without any kind of consent, and then linking those profiles on public persona's profiles, again without asking and with no way to remove it, then it becomes just an illicit practice that should be investigated for illegal behavior. Klout is making seem as if these people all agreed to participate, when it's not the case, which afaik is illegal.

Google hasn't succeeded yet? it's certainly a useful site already as well as a profitable one. Like Google, Klout will always be a work-in-progress. You don't have to be perfect to be useful.

Last week Klout told me I no longer influence my wife. I could have told them that years ago :(

Rodney Dangerfield, is that you?

No but its true - she hasn't even created an account but when I logged in last week it said she was one of the facebook profiles I no longer influence!

Perhaps Klout will become the killer-app to help educate the public on the 'dangers' of putting too much information the Internet. It is time people become more wary of 'free' things too.

I don't like Klout either. I have found no way to "un-signup" for it, after sending a while looking at their web site after logging in.

Best I could do was to turn off Klout access for my Twitter and Facebook accounts.

I have never found any benefit from Klout. Other social apps like G+, Twitter, and Facebook actually provide me with some value in exchange for information on what I am doing.

The positive side of social networks is spending time creating content for people who you like to read and read things written by people you know (or at least know about and want to follow them). I don't see what Klout brings to this party.

Is aggregating by username (or name) some public data, and then publishing it on the internet, something that should be limited? I'm probably biased - on a much smaller scale, that's something I'm doing too on hashtagify.me, where you can also find a relative "score" for twitter users related to specific hashtags - but this reasoning looks very dangerous to me.

Just to make an example, if I collect the data about political contributions made by a given industrialist, and publish that data on my blog to say something about that person's influence and political leaning, should the said person be able to stop me?

On the other hand, if the published data or the accompanying analysis is demonstrably incorrect, biased, and especially if it could be considered libel, there are already ways to react. I think that those ways should already be enough to protect one's only reputation.

Klout is odious?

People's need for ego-stroking is odious

Well said.

Thanks for all the comments on my blog post. I particularly welcome them on Hacker News, a solid community with a sense of which members have clout as well as a scoring system for tracking the value of individual's contributions. I think social metrics like Hacker News karma are useful; I just object to the blatantly tacky marketing aspect of Klout.

After my blog post got some exposure Klout revived my month old support request and removed the Klout page about me. I don't know if they changed their policy in general or if I'm a special case. Already feeling regret; I really needed some new Axe hair gel.

Sounds a bit like sour grapes. If you have a problem with something like this, you should have a problem with the fact that the data they're mining is public data and not that people are mining it.

I think an aspect that s being ignored here is the lengths to which Klout is going to make sure the info they are aggregating isn't exploited. They could be gathering this info and then turning around and selling it directly to marketers in the same fashion email lists are.

Instead they are trying to monetize by using perks, which is something you'll never even know is available to you unless you visit Klout.com and log in. Seems better to me than a marketing email with a double opt in.

You can get a lot of similar information (frequent topics & corespondents) with ThinkUp, but you control your data.

Bizarre comic tweeter @horse_ebooks has the same Klout score (67) as @biz. It was actually higher a little while ago.

Klout has also sent me their unsolicited Perk spam several times, even after I disabled it via their website. I complained to them on Twitter but got no response. In the end I blacklisted their domain.

Here's how to delete your Klout profile:

1. create an account if you don't have one

2. login to the account and go to http://klout.com/#/edit-settings/profile

3. click the "If you would like to delete your account, click here" at the bottom of the page.

Why is Klout any more odious than any number of other Twitter statistic apps? http://tweetstats.com/graphs/nelson http://twitaholic.com/nelson/

I am very proud of my influence: http://tweetstats.com/graphs/andrewklofas

Because, I think, Twitter provides a lot of value to me. What does Klout give us? Nothing?

Much like Jersey Shore, Klout has a particular target demographic which find the service appealing (They're probably not reading HN). That particular demographic also happens to be very sought after by advertisers. Good for them I say.

The problem with this is that you can't manufacture cool.

Public domain - fair game.