I was contacted months ago by a young girl who wanted to know my Klout score. She was making a list of important people to follow on twitter. It made me smile. When I answered that my Klout score is on klout.com (like everyone else’s) and that it hovers between roughly 55 and seventy-something depending on my mood, and the temperature of the seawater in Belgium, she got upset. Klout was important, and I was not taking her seriously.
I explained that the temperature of the seawater does have a determining effect on my Klout score. If it gets too cold, I migrate South, and stop tweeting for a while. My Klout thingy sinks accordingly like a stone with respiratory difficulties. If the temperature is ok, my mood gets better, I twitter chat with friends, spread some blog posts around, and my Klout score sours up. That did not make her happy either.
Now, how can you determine if someone is important based on a yo-yo Klout score? Try walking up to somebody, and ask how important he is. Can you picture that? How do you define ‘important’? Is that a figure in two digits? Will he be more important tomorrow? Is he important because he has money? To whom is he important?
What does my Klout score tell you? Does it show you what people think about what I write? What impact my tweets/posts/musings have? Does it give a value on quality? Even on quantity? If so, in relation to what exactly? To my goals? Did the girl mean with ‘important’ influential? Influential on what topic? To what audience?
I have nothing against Klout.com. It is a rating system amongst many. I do have something against conclusions hastily drawn from a two digit number that gets influenced by the temperature of seawater.
If you want to determine if someone is important, relevant, influential, you’ll have to rely on more than just an automated tool. You’ll have to analyze all kinds of data, you’ll have to sift through criteria, and you’ll have to put stuff in context. Content might be King, but contextual information is Queen.
There is no number that can tell you whether I am important or not. Only you can determine that.
Thank you for sharing this, it will benefit my Klout score…. :-).
@SpeakMediaBlog tssss 😉 http://bit.ly/nLIjEO
Your Klout score? I could not care less… http://t.co/0dylzQA via @AddToAny
What do you think of this post? Your Klout score? I could not care less… http://t.co/FHQLgRG #iabc #social media #klout
Hi Danny, if you don’t care about Klout score, try to be consistent with yourself and remove your follow friday points and your amount of twitter followers in the right column of your blog 😉
Oh Vinch. I just saying Klout is just a number as all others. Indeed not better or worse. Nothing against it, just advocating putting it into context before determining value. As with all other automated measures…
Great post! RT @dannydevriendt: Your Klout score? I could not care less… http://t.co/Oh2swHG (post) #pnid
I second that; Your Klout score? I could not care less… http://t.co/svcxsiT by @dannydevriendt
Your Klout score? I could not care less… http://t.co/rYtCtJg (post) #pnid via @dannydevriendt
Darn! Kung Fu Panda2? Free tickets? And I just bumped myself on their black list? AAAARGH! 🙂
Thank you for this refreshing post. But I’ve heard though, if your Klout score is high enough, you can now score some sweet deals from the Klout creators. So sorry, looks like you won’t be able to get free tickets to KungFu Panda 2.