Every Klout user will see the updated Klout Score from August 14th 2012
Klout have announced some major changes, some of which have been a long time coming. You might have seen a “heads up” message on your Klout profile over the past few days or read blog posts like this one from JD Rucker.
August 14th 2012 is the day we started to see the changes slowly being applied. This roll-out will take some weeks to complete so do not worry if you do not see all the new changes yet. Here is a video which features the Klout CEO Joe Fernandez, talking about the changes, including an updated Klout Score, and a revamped website redesign.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fnd7zDgx18w?rel=0
The mobile apps have updated too.
The two Klout mobile apps that I currently have installed now show the new Klout score without any issues. The last major Klout change happened in October 2011, and the apps that I used at that time could not handle those major changes. One of them was rendered useless and was treated to the delete action, never to return. One of the apps I now use is the official Klout app that was recently launched. It allows users to swipe against various topics to give +K to others. You can tilt your mobile/tablet to view the 30-day score history of the new Klout score. Note that you cannot view your back history of the previous scores prior to August 14th. Klout will release more functionality to the mobile app, which is great news. My other app shows the new scores as well, for multiple Klout accounts. I use that to keep an eye on work competitors and other interesting accounts.
Moments – Klout redesigned
“Moments” from the new Klout (source: Klout blog)
Moments is a new addition to Klout. A “moment” is a social media post that has generated action from the people in your networks. Now we can look at our posts and see the ones that contributed the most to our Klout score.
Many tried to work out what klout really measured!
Previously we could guess or analyze our posts over time to develop clues as to what actions or types of posts contributed to the Klout score changing. I laughed when I read a blog post by Steven Hughes which was published on May 16, 2012, titled
“4 Surefire Ways to Influence Your Klout Score”. Its conclusions were similar to those that I had worked out for myself. I compared other peoples scores to my own in Klout, which exposed the networks that they were influential in. I analyzed the type of posts that contributed to their score. I was impressed on many occasions and also shocked a few times.
I liked Tom Webster’s June 2012 blog post “What Klout Really Measures – Ethos, Pathos, and Logos”. It makes good reading! I shared it on many of my accounts at that time. Yet another attempt at finding out what Klout really measured.
Now we know what klout really measures!
Here are some of the top signals that Klout measures, as listed by Klout, so no more guessing!
- Facebook:
- Mentions: A mention of your name in a post indicates an effort to engage with you directly.
- Likes: The simplest action that shows engagement with the content you create.
- Comments: As a reaction to content you share, comments also reflect direct engagement by your network.
- Subscribers: Subscriber count is a more persistent measure of influence that grows over time.
- Wall Posts: Posts to your wall indicate both influence and engagement.
- Friends: Friend count measures the reach of your network but is less important than how your network engages with your content.
- Twitter
- Retweets: Retweets increase your influence by exposing your content to extended follower networks.
- Mentions: People seeking your attention by mentioning you is a strong signal of influence. We also take into account the differences in types of mentions, including “via” and “cc”.
- List Memberships: Being included on lists curated by other users demonstrates your areas of influence.
- Followers: Follower count is one factor in your Score, but we heavily favor engagement over size of audience.
- Replies: Replies show that you are consistently engaging your network with quality content.
- Google+
- Comments: As a reaction to content you share, comments also reflect direct engagement by your network.
- +1’s: The simplest action that shows engagement with the content you create.
- Reshares: Reshares increase your influence by exposing your content to extended networks on Google+.
- LinkedIn
- Title: Your reported title on LinkedIn is a signal of your real-world influence and is persistent.
- Connections: Your connection graph helps validate your real-world influence.
- Recommenders: The recommenders in your network add additional signals to the contribution LinkedIn makes to your Score.
- Comments: As a reaction to content you share, comments also reflect direct engagement by your network.
- foursquare
- Tips Done: The number of suggestions you’ve left that have been completed indicate your ability to influence others on foursquare.
- Klout
- +K received: Receiving +K increases your Klout Score by an amount that is capped in every 90-day measurement cycle to protect the integrity of the Score.
- Wikipedia
- Page Importance: Measured by applying a PageRank algorithm against the Wikipedia page graph.
- Inlinks to Outlinks Ratio: Compares the number of inbound links to a page to the number of outbound links.
- Number of Inlinks: Measures the total number of inbound links to a page.
Now we know! Read more here!
Offline influence vs. Online influence
I am a firm believer of judging the value of someone to your business by looking at how influential the person is relative to the online network or offline area where you want the person to be influential to your prospects. I used the compare Klout trick that I mentioned earlier to break down a person’s Klout score to see exactly where they were influential online. Offline influence could be tested by watching the person in action, or gaining qualified recommendations etc. I have seen people with a high Klout score proposed as an influencer for a high tech scenario when their score was high due to popular or funny pictures posted to their friends on Facebook.
Another view of the new Klout (source: Klout blog)
For further reading, one of my favorite posts on this topic is “The 7 Levels of Influence in the Attention Economy” by Douglas Idugboe. I just had to comment on that blog post!
Klout has its place, so we all must make sure we know what that place is. It has become much much better since August 14th, and I love that.
Klout is trying to address the balance. It now users 400 distinct data inputs to determine the score, compared to 100 with the old score. It now includes new data points from LinkedIn and Wikipedia entries as well, to help with measuring “Real-World Influence”. Douglas Idugboe’s post gives some clues about “Real-World Influence” and he does not mention Wikipedia entries at all 😉
Image source: “The six influence flows” by Philip Sheldrake
I recommend reading “The six influence flows” by Philip Sheldrake. A breath of fresh air on the topic of real world influence for companies. However, I like where Klout is moving to.
The impact of the score change so far.
I have spent a few hours looking at new scores vs. old ones for friends, colleagues, businesses etc. I noticed about 15% that had dropped, including YouTube which came down from 100 to 91. The rest went up by a few points and some by many. I saw one Klout user with just a question mark, no score at all. This person is an ultra high output user so maybe his output needed some serious Klout computing power to work out the new score 😉
What we need is stability in the scores, and moving to a 90-day period compared to the previous 30-day might help. My biggest complaint with the previous scores was the tendency to a “downward trend” that almost everyone had whether they were on vacation or not. I will not mention all the other issues. You can look at the comment streams of many of Klout’s Facebook posts over the last 10 months to see them mentioned there. I read those posts and stopped commenting. Surely they heard us by now, and it looks like they did! Lets see if they will get around to solving the other issues as well.
Have you seen any notable changes to your score? Do you like the new layout and the promised changes? Its looking good.. right? #Kudos Klout
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