Oh, Klout. I want to love you, but you just won’t let me.
Let me begin this post by saying that Klout, the web site that claims to measure social media influence, isn’t a terrible idea. There’s a really good reason to want a decent methodology for determining influence online. After all, if you’re going to be spending time and effort to reach out to your audiences through social media, it makes sense to try to target the audience members who are most influential, and most likely to use their influence to talk up your product or service.
The idea is solid. But Klout’s implementation is terrible, for one simple reason. Their algorithm is ridiculously bad.
I’m not the first person to point this out. But until today, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt; maybe it works, mostly, with little problems here and there. But in fact, their ratings just don’t bear any resemblance to reality.
To demonstrate, have a look at the screen caps after the jump. These were all taken today.
