Thank you for the post!!!
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Office Space

You hit on two great points… quantitative data can never tell the whole story (I'm a big fan of certain types of qualitative research), and diversity of perspectives is the foundation of a vibrant community. These two concepts are the reason why measuring influence and being able to filter on influence are detrimental to a community. I'm back to where I was when commenting to Joe, though… it was inevitable that the wealth of numbers and statistics was going to be assembled. There's not much we can do about it but be cognizant of our prejudices as we connect within the community.

Thanks again for the comment!

But to your credit (and Klout's) I see the point of tracking influence. And I see that in a community focused on accumulating followers, retweets, and friends… it was inevitable that those pieces of information would eventually be assembled and analyzed. Klout appears to be doing a good job from a technical standpoint and I can respect that.

I agree that it seems that by following just the numbers, influence can be democratized, but I still stand behind my belief that it also polarizes and encourages users to exclude (or even devalue) others with low scores.

If someone is new to Twitter or late entering the social media community, it would be extremely difficult to make an impact or build a following in the face of Klout filtering, unless you already have influence such as a celebrity who can use other mediums to create buzz very quickly.

I guess I'm just nostalgic for the “good 'ol days” in social media when we were all equal and an intern could tweet with a CEO.

Thanks again for the thoughtful response, Joe. I look forward to talking with you.

Thanks again for the comment!

As a former analytics junkie, I have to say that I am not a fan of letting the data do the talking. The data needs to be interepreted, frameworked, and challenged before it can yield information, knowledge and ultimately insight.

While Klout does provide another dataset, it can't possibly raise to the level of meaningful insight. I just have a number, but the Klout score needs to be cross-referenced with a variety of other bits of data to arrive at a meaningful conclusion.

In the end, we should be looking at “diversity of perspectives” if we want to build sustainable and vibrant communities. Companies and personal brands should build a robust story championed by people with differing points of views. Does it really matter what one piece of data says about them? I hope not.

Great post. I am actually one of the cofounders here at Klout (which is totally separate than Hootsuite, check out Klout.com). Our goal is definitely not to limit the spread of ideas or penalize people who aren't popular. We believe that every person that creates content online has influence. We want to understand who they influence and on what topics. We want our data to be used to surface the person who doesn't have a ton of followers but is the thought leader on solar power, knitting or whatever the topic might be. We think that the person who is most influential about Rolls Royce might be a 16 year old kid who has never touched one but is constantly posting about them online and driving conversations.

People have always been segmented by money, looks or even follower count (and there are a lot of people with huge follower counts and very low Klout scores). We want to democratize this and let the data do the talking. What's great about Hootsuite's implementation of Klout data is that it lets users decide when and how to filter their streams. There are times when filtering out as much noise as possible is extremely valuable and other times where you want to expose yourself to what everyone is saying.

Great conversation you are starting here. Happy to chat sometime if you want to hear more about our approach to influence. Thanks!

Thanks, Michelle, for taking the time to write on this topic. The questions you raise on Klout are interesting, too. With whom does Klout really click? And could a tweaked metric offset its face-value shortcomings? Influence vs. ideas, yes – and impact: actually getting things done in the physical world. So many people could care less about Ashton Kutcher, but if he could help solve something like the world malaria problem, then, yes, indeed, he has real clout.

As for ideas and influence being currency, it's true they're both currency in their own ways. But think about this… sometimes someone with great ideas may be just starting out… maybe they just got out of high school or college, or maybe they've been too busy working to focus on social media… and maybe they're brilliant… but no one ever hears them because they have a low Klout score and they're getting filtered. But three months later someone with a high score mentions the same concept and all of the sudden it's gold. Yes, the great idea did get out. But filtering perpetuates an environment where the only thing that's valued is what comes from top influencers. It's very limiting, and instead of the benefits of a flat world, we're back to silos.

Bryan, thanks again for furthering the conversation!

I wasn't aware of HootSuite's Klout, so thanks for introducing me to that.

This is a very interesting debate, ideas vs. influence. As you said, many people are seeking faux influence. Certain aspects of social media are becoming a popularity contest – and this is nothing new. Before we had Twitter followers and Facebook fans, we had forums post counts and on-line gaming high scores. There will always be people who invest an obscene amount of time in being some form of “popular”. And that's just it! Popularity does not equate to influence (e.g. Ashton Kutcher).

I've always been a fan of the snowball effect when it comes to generating ideas. Bounce your ideas off others and they'll add to it, and vice versa. This is similar to the video above of “ideas having sex”. So while I do understand the want for a measurement of influence, I also don't want to be cut off from that one potential person. I operate under the “you never know” premise. You never know who you're going to meet one day, you never know who will read your tweet one day, you never know who will change your life one day. Obviously any tool/software that essentially reduces potential interactions greatly hinders potential opportunities.

When it comes to the spread of ideas, you have to assume that the biggest of ideas will make it through the relevant networks regardless, because they are just so great. But what about the plain good ideas? They aren't life-altering, yet, but they provide some sort of positive influence or resource. And then from that idea comes another, and another, and another. These are the ideas that could be seeing stop signs along the way due to Klout scoring. What if in order for one idea to get off the ground all it needed was Person A to retweet it. But Person A does not see this idea because it came from a person with little to no influence?

There is no one currency, it is both ideas and influence. Bigger ideas need less help, less influence. Smaller, but good, ideas need a little more help, more influence to get them rolling.