Klout and Twitter - It’s Judgment Day for Your KLOUT !

Got Klout? In the past, the judge of Twitter influence was its followers. Famous people and industry leaders could be identified by the number of followers they had on Twitter. More followers meant more influence. It seemed to make sense. Logically, the more followers a Twitter account had collected, the larger the audience and the bigger the influence. Then, opportunists (read marketers) came in and messed things up. Paid services arose to help you amass followers and position yourself as an expert. For a few dollars, you, too, could gain thousands of followers in a day! Many of the followers were fake or inactive accounts and irrelevant. Soon accounts with SPAM-like content were sporting 100,000+ followers, and we all stared in wide-eyed wonder at this and proclaimed “What the heck?” How do I know if an account is real or authoritative? Enter Klout.

Founded in 2008, Klout began analyzing Twitter accounts based on a combination of factors—tweet to re-tweet ratios, @mentions, and other top-secret have-to-kill-you-if-I-tell-you metrics—to derive a score (1-99) that rates the influence of accounts. As Klout has grown (becoming a social platform in its own right), more and more marketers are turning to Klout as an indicator of authority (read influence) for Twitter accounts. More recently, Klout has made a move to measure your Klout not only based on Twitter activity, but also based on your LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and Foursquare engagement as well.

Klout has been showing up in other places, too. Hootsuite has been reporting Klout scores along with Twitter profiles for some time, and BING has started including Klout in some search results. This past week, Twitter, itself, has begun presenting Klout scores (with the use of the Klout browser app) as a part of their web interface. So, there it is—right there in front of God and everybody—your Klout score. Soon, Twitter users everywhere may be seeing your tweets in a different light. Is your Klout score high enough?

Some questions bounce around in my head. Will users be more inclined to follow, share, or engage you if you have a higher score? Will opportunists rush in and offer you a Klout-raising service? Is Klout becoming the industry standard for measuring true social media influence? Two things are for sure—changes are underway, and right now, that little orange icon with the white number matters.

Got Klout?