Klout

Discussion of financial interests of Wikimedia and companies who contribute, or simply spend money on a Wikipedia presence.
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SB_Johnny
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Klout

Unread post by SB_Johnny » Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:03 pm

I'm just as confused as Jimbo seems to be about this. Is Klout (new to me, BTW) indexing Wikipedia editors, or is it indexing BLPs? :blink:
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Re: Klout

Unread post by DanMurphy » Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:09 pm

Klout (I prefer the satirical service "Klouchebag") is a fad website that sprang up about a year ago promising to score your "influence" on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Basically, if you have a lot of followers who tend to pay attention to what you write, you have a lot of "Klout." The scoring algorithm is of course easily gamed, has entirely subjective (and empirically stupid) notions of "influence" and was only really attractive to silicon valley asshats and assorted hangers on.

It had a brief flurry of intense interest around "monetizing" online influence. Then people figured out it was all BS and it's dropping deeper into obscurity every day.

I have no idea what the Wikipedia connection is.

ADDING: Ah, I just looked. Klout works by having you sign up (i.e. it's a service for narcissists) and linking all your social media accounts, twitter, facebook, whatever. It's now urging Klout members to link their Wikipedia usernames to their Klout account. Yes, that's right. For some strange reason klout believes that Wikipedia is a social media site where people go to exercise influence. How could that have happened?

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Re: Klout

Unread post by thekohser » Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:53 pm

DanMurphy wrote: Then people figured out it was all BS and it's dropping deeper into obscurity every day.
Maybe Jimmie Wales can help rescue it:
I just looked at Klout for the first time in months and it actually seems to be much improved. If they are starting to look more at things like whether or not someone has a Wikipedia entry, that might be helpful. It used to seem to be a service that rewarded people primarily for having lots of twitter followers and posting a lot, which I think is silly. But now the rankings for various people I know in the Internet world seems at least somewhat plausible.
As always, Jimbo's assessment of something is primarily based on how that thing treats the "people he knows".
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Re: Klout

Unread post by Kelly Martin » Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:33 pm

DanMurphy wrote:Klout (I prefer the satirical service "Klouchebag") is a fad website that sprang up about a year ago promising to score your "influence" on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Basically, if you have a lot of followers who tend to pay attention to what you write, you have a lot of "Klout." The scoring algorithm is of course easily gamed, has entirely subjective (and empirically stupid) notions of "influence" and was only really attractive to silicon valley asshats and assorted hangers on.
Klout is vaguely important because some marketers won't have a meeting with you unless your Klout score is above some arbitrary margin. If you're in that industry and have to deal with such idiots, then you have to pay attention to it.

It's a fad, and like all fads, it will pass. It's obvious that Klout's scoring model is insane, in that my own Klout score has varied from 7 to 94 (!), and for a long time Klout had identified me as being influential about smoking because (as far as I can tell) I once tweeted an old, lame joke. What I have yet to see is how Klout is planning to monetize all the data they're collecting.

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Re: Klout

Unread post by Sweet Revenge » Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:10 pm

Serendipity from this week's New Yorker:
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edit:I figured out how to embed it...

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Re: Klout

Unread post by DanMurphy » Sat Sep 29, 2012 7:32 pm

When I searched for Lily Cole, who doesn't much use twitter or facebook, klout told me that she's influential on several topics including, much to my surprise "World of Warcraft". This turns out to be because there was some kind of commercial for the Body Shop called "WOW! project" and her line of makeup is featured.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:41, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
I was recently talking to one of my academic mentors/"tolerators of dan" (I ended up becoming a hack, rather than becoming a serious researcher; some still lord this over me) about the organization of knowledge in a wired world. He, like Jimbo, suggested using "Lily Cole" as a litmus test for influence and relevance when it comes to important knowledge.

So all you people who might suggest that Jimmy is completely unqualified to pontificate on the online organization of knowledge, y'all are just a bunch of haters who are jealous. And junk. Basically, this kid got it right (substitute "jimbo" for "britney"):

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Klout

Unread post by Mancunium » Sat Sep 14, 2013 2:33 pm

When A Startup Worth Hundreds Of Millions Goes Dark: Klout's Quiet Year Of Growth And Struggle
Business Insider, 14 September 2013 link
It's a question all startups have to answer between giant fundraises and figuring out business models.

Some growing companies, like Twitter and Facebook, handle adolescence well. For others it's awkward and takes serious soul-searching to finding a place in the business world.

Klout is one of those companies.

In early 2012, the social importance ranking engine was on fire. Kleiner Perkins, Microsoft, and other big-name backers pumped $30 million into Joe Fernandez's company at a valuation worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then Klout vanished from headlines. Last week it reappeared. The news wasn't good.

Klout's COO and board member, Emil Michael, resigned. He left for Uber, the latest red-hot startup worth billions of dollars, to be its SVP of Business.

Losing Michael was one of a few snags the company has faced since its 2012 fundraise. The rumor mill has started to churn.

Why did Michael leave?

Is the company burning too much money?

Does it have a real business or revenue?

Are investors fed up?

Is Klout failing?
If you're interested in the answers to these questions (I'm not), you could read Business Insider's lengthy puff piece. Klout uses scoring algorithms "to measure 400 signals, like Wikipedia pages and Bing searches, in addition to social media activity".

I saw my own Klout score once. It was lower than the score of Bo, the White House dog. This was a couple of years ago, when Justin Bieber had a perfect Klout score of 100, and Barack Obama had a score of 58.

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Re: Klout

Unread post by DanMurphy » Sat Sep 14, 2013 4:11 pm

I preferred Klouchebag (sadly discontinued).

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Re: Klout

Unread post by Zoloft » Sat Sep 14, 2013 6:10 pm

Klout: Play Farmville with your reputation.

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Re: Klout

Unread post by thekohser » Sat Sep 14, 2013 6:21 pm

Shall we merge this?
Edit: Done --Zoloft
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Re: Klout

Unread post by Wer900 » Sat Sep 14, 2013 8:34 pm

thekohser wrote:Shall we merge this?
Yes, definitely do so.
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Re: Klout

Unread post by EricBarbour » Sat Sep 14, 2013 10:42 pm

That reminds me. Have a dose of Robert Scoble:

https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/RPfZam8JNmV
+Jimmy Wales invented Wikipedia, but he only has 85.
Why do so many people follow Scoble's babblings? He is an egotistical shithead.

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Re: Klout

Unread post by thekohser » Sun Sep 15, 2013 4:05 pm

Mancunium wrote:When A Startup Worth Hundreds Of Millions Goes Dark: Klout's Quiet Year Of Growth And Struggle
Business Insider, 14 September 2013 link
It's a question all startups have to answer between giant fundraises and figuring out business models.
...
Losing Michael was one of a few snags the company has faced since its 2012 fundraise. The rumor mill has started to churn.

I tried to leave a comment about that, but it was deleted by Business Insider staff. Yet another reason to remind everyone that Business Insider was launched by a man charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and that he agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement.
Your Comment Has Been Sent To The Bleachers

You wrote: Alyson, is "fundraise" a noun in your dictionary?

On this post: When A Startup Worth Hundreds Of Millions Goes Dark: Klout's Quiet Year Of Growth And Struggle

Business Insider editorial staff has deemed this comment to be off-topic, abusive, and generally noncompliant with our Terms of Service. You can read more about our commenting philosophy here.

Regards,

Business Insider
www.businessinsider.com
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Re: Klout

Unread post by DanMurphy » Sun Sep 15, 2013 4:37 pm

In related Business Insider news, loud and proud misogynist Pax Dickinson, the website's CTO, was fired this week when he became a public embarrassment.

The company's founder Henry Blodget was the only "journalist" brave enough to ask this question: "12/,Why do some people hate Jews."

Sounds like a loving and thoughtful place to work.

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Re: Klout

Unread post by Mancunium » Sun Sep 15, 2013 5:35 pm

Business Insider CTO Forced Out for Sexist, Racist Tweets and Not Understanding the Internet
Slate, 10 September 2013 link
Dickinson may see the Internet as a freewheeling alterna-reality where he’s liberated to air his “unpopular truths” about the ills of women’s suffrage and employment. But the Internet is also the workplace. It’s perplexing why Business Insider would employ someone as openly racist and sexist as Pax Dickinson is, but it’s positively mind-boggling that Business Insider hired a CTO who doesn’t even understand that the Internet is real life.
This is the problem with Wikipedia. Senior Wikipedians in good standing insisted on describing two American teenagers as bastards, and to identify them precisely with their full names, city of residence, and complete dates of birth, even though they knew full well that the children were legitimate, and that their legitimacy had never been in question.

For the malicious scum who kept this up for two years, and fought an AfD battle to keep humiliating those kids, it was all a big joke. Glued to the computer screens in their darkened rooms, they are unable to imagine the pain they were inflicting on children who had never done them any harm. Why? Because Wikipedia's troop of BLP slanderers are unable to see, feel, and understand any connection between their 'World of Wikipedia' game and real life.
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Re: Klout

Unread post by thekohser » Sun Sep 15, 2013 6:15 pm

Edit: Nevermind.
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Re: Klout

Unread post by EricBarbour » Sun Sep 15, 2013 10:17 pm

thekohser wrote:Yet another reason to remind everyone that Business Insider was launched by a man charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and that he agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement.
I was going to say that. Plus, Business Insider is notoriously one of the greediest websites. It runs hundreds of Javascripts from advertisers, trackers, and assorted dubious business entities. And it is quite fond of dishing dirt on other websites. Yet Google, Bing etc. now index it as if it were a "serious business-news site".

http://pandodaily.com/2012/06/24/oddly- ... rilliance/
It’s also a great startup lesson. If you’re an innovative startup, particularly a disruptive one, people won’t just fight you, or denigrate you. They will HATE you, with real hatred. Facebook went through this. Twitter went through this. Embrace the hatred. The hatred is good. Let it wash over you, and then kick ass.”
There's that word again......"disruptive".

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Re: Klout

Unread post by Wer900 » Sun Sep 15, 2013 10:39 pm

I always thought the name Business Insider was kinda funny.
Points for anyone who can get the irony.
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Re: Klout

Unread post by thekohser » Fri Feb 07, 2014 2:41 am

Klout just sent me this e-mail that I'm sure they thought was super-cool, but to me, it conveyed no information:
Introducing the #NewKlout

Today we’re excited to announce the launch of a new version of Klout that helps you not only measure your influence, but also increase it.

This new version was developed with one simple truth in mind: the best way to make an impact online is to share great content.

Login today to get started with #NewKlout.

Sincerely,

The Klout Team
P.S. My Klout Score of 46 puts me "in the top 30% of social media users".
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Re: Klout

Unread post by thekohser » Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:50 pm

Current Klout scores:

Jimmy Wales - 90
Sarah Stierch - 69
Sue Gardner - 51
Lila Tretikov - 48
Gregory Kohs - 46
Wil Sinclair - 44
Larry Sanger - 42
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Re: Klout

Unread post by Hex » Tue Jun 17, 2014 9:43 am

I thought I'd see what I get, but the registration form simply will not work for me, in Chrome or even Internet Explorer. Good job, #NewKlout.
My question, to this esteemed Wiki community, is this: Do you think that a Wiki could successfully generate a useful encyclopedia? -- JimboWales
Yes, but in the end it wouldn't be an encyclopedia. It would be a wiki. -- WardCunningham (Jan 2001)

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Re: Klout

Unread post by thekohser » Thu May 07, 2015 2:06 am

Klout has introduced something they call "Topic Expertise", where they associate one's social media chatter with different topics that you seem to talk about a lot. I looked up where I stand on the subject of "Wikipedia". Apparently, I am among the top 0.3% of people, regarding my "expertise" in Wikipedia.

But I'm not in the Top 9:

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Re: Klout

Unread post by spartaz » Sat May 09, 2015 10:26 am

I wonder if you get extra points for being on the inside pissing down instead of being outside pissing in?
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