social media

You may have heard of Klout, a startup that measures the online influence of users of social media sites and generates a score based upon users’ connections and activities. Klout uses an algorithm to determine a user’s “real” social media reach, using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, in addition to several other variables. In particular, Klout looks at whether a user is engaged within their respective audience (excluding spam accounts) on these platforms, as well as what happens to the content a user shares; whether its reposted/retweeted, sparks a conversation, or is simply ignored. In addition, Klout also analyzes how influential a user’s engaged audience is, as well as whether a user is influencing other important users.

Recently, Klout introduced +K (not to be confused with Google’s +1 button or the new Google+), which measures social media influence on a particular topic by permitting users to give other users authority on these topics. This initiative allows users to give other users a +K if the user influenced them on a particular topic. Users are limited to five +Ks every day that can be given to any user in any topic.
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