Have you ever wondered exactly where you stand in the Twitterverse? Klout is  an app that analyzes your Twitter profile and determines exactly how much influence you have over the Twitter community.

The process is simple: all you have to do is sign up, give Klout your Twitter username, and a few minutes later you get back a lot of information about how influential you are, including a numerical score (called a K-Score),  and graphs and charts. Currently, Useful Tools is in the “Climber” quadrant of the main chart…not surprising since we just launched. There’s also a world map, reminiscent of Risk,  that shows you the geographic extent of your influence and lets you plan for world domination.

Although they aren’t the only company that seeks to measure Twitter influence, Klout has an innovative way of visualizing that influence through graphs, charts and maps. We found  the concept intriguing. To learn more, we emailed Joe Fernandez, one of the co-founders of Klout, and asked him some questions about the app itself and about the nature of influence in social media. Here’s what he had to say:

1) How did you come up with the idea for Klout?

JF:  “In December of 2007 I had surgery on my jaw and for 3 months it was
wired shut and I couldn’t speak.  I had always been very active in social
media but during that time it took on a whole new level of importance for me
as it was the easiest way I could communicate with the outside world.  Not
sure what part of it was a result of the pain medication (ha) but I spent  a
lot of that time thinking about where this technology was headed and how
businesses were going to have a hard time finding signal through the noise
as more people adopted Twitter and other tools.  From there Klout was born
as I saw a distinct need that I thought could be addressed.”

2)How did you come up with the criteria Klout uses to calculate influence?

JF:  “To start, we can only calculate based of data that is accessible
through Twitter’s API or similar methods.  Thankfully Twitter is pretty much
an open book in terms of the data they give you access to so we weren’t
limited too much.  I had an idea of what I thought influence was but after
several months of talking with leaders in this space I realized that there
were a lot of complexities and subtleties that needed to be accounted for.
For example, you would think someone having a lot of followers should be
very influential but this is one of the most misleading stats and the
easiest thing for someone to game on Twitter.”

“After several months of talking with people, testing, getting more feedback
we came up with an initial algorithm that everyone felt was pretty accurate.
Since that time we have gotten feedback from other people and seen the way
the community uses Twitter continue to morph so we have adjusted the
calculations in response.  We see this as something we will constantly be
tweaking.”

3) How can measuring the amount of influence you have on Twitter help
you become more influential?

JF:  “Influence is really the currency of social media.  Being able to drive
clicks, sales or mindshare for topics you are passionate about is going to
be a valuable skill for any individual in the near future.  Measuring your
influence through services like Klout lets you set your benchmark and gain
insight into how the world sees you.  Who are you influencing?  What are you
influential about?  Once you start having this data you can experiment with
your tweet behavior to become more effective.”

4) Where do you plan to take Klout in the future?

JF: ” At the individual level we want to add more actionable data to our
system.  If you did X, Y, Z your tweets would have more impact.  We also see
integrating Klout with other products to improve user experience through
filtering.  Only show a person information from people and topics they are
interested in for example.”

5) Who do you think is the most influential person on Twitter right now?

JF:” @ev is in a pretty strong position I would say.  While his overall
influence is high, he isn’t that influential specifically to me compared to
close friends.  Klout actually measures influence between each node of the
social graph.  We can tell you who is the most influential person on twitter
for any specific person.”

The only problem I noticed when I tested Klout out on the Useful Tools Twitter account is that most of the links in our tweets are not being counted. This is probably because we use HootSuite to manage the account, and it uses its own special shortened URL format.   Still, the user interface is attractive and its ability to show you a visual representation of how you influence others on Twitter is certainly useful for anyone trying to build a presence there. According to the Klout blog, they’ll also be adding tags in the near future, so you can see who is the most influential for a particular topic.

What do you think of Klout? Care to try it out and share your K-Score?

Our Rating of Klout

Tags: Twitter

Categories:social