How Much Klout do You Have?

A couple of months ago I saw a message somewhere that said that employers were now taking the Klout scores of potential employees into account before employing them. Klout score? WTF? The message - probably written by a Klout employee - went on to say that companies were refusing to hire people with Klout scores of less than 35. Really, and I thought it was a conspiracy from the alien lead cabal that was stopping me getting my dream job.

So I immediately logged onto www.klout.com and registered. Besides my name, Klout wanted details of my Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts. If I had an Instagram or Foursquare account I could have also entered those details. They also allowed me to connect other accounts such as Blogger, which I did, and Wordpress, which I didn’t. But while researching this post I discovered that Blogger and Wordpress accounts have no influence on a Klout score. So why did Klout want them? Is Klout part of the NSA’s PRISM? 

So What Does Klout Do? 

According to the Klout website, Klout digs deep into social media to understand how people influence each other, so that everyone can discover and be recognized for how they influence the world. 

My initial Klout score was 46, way higher than 35, so it must be the alien cabal after all. According to the website Barrack Obama has a Klout of 99. Justin Bieber had a Klout of 92. So wow my Klout of 46 was just under half of Barrack’s. Did that mean I should be Prime Minister of a much smaller pretend middle power like Australia?

No, because the higher your Klout Score the tougher it becomes to increase. Damn. But I still reckon I would make a much better PM than Tony Abbott. And so would about 23,000,000 other Australians I hear you shout. 

So how is a Klout score calculated?

According to the website Klout measures multiple pieces of data from several social networks, and also real world data from places like Bing and Wikipedia. Then we apply them to our Klout Score algorithm, and then show the resulting number on your profile. 

When I looked at my Klout activity that was affecting my score, a lot of it was from Farmville. So maybe Barrack and Justin spend a lot more time than me playing Farmville.  I also thought a Klout score would be so easy to rig, just play a lot of games on Facebook.

But no, according to the website: posting a thousand times and getting zero responses is not as influential as posting once and getting a thousand responses. It isn’t about how much someone talks, but about how many people listen and respond. 

Win Free Perks. 

If you are judged to be a big Klout, you get to win stuff, like I won 50 business cards. Problem is I have to pay for them to be mailed out to Australia. But someone supposedly won a Sony NEX 3N and Sony Action Cam, plus lunch with the team who built the amazing products.

Sarcasm aside, I was thinking that publishers might start requiring Klout scores to be submitted along with manuscripts. I have read that they already want potential writers to have active blogs and lots of twitter followers, so I figure that a Klout score, or some version of it, will be wanted in the future. Currently my Klout score is 50 – must be playing Farmville more - surely my score is good enough to be Mayor of Wangaratta.