Klouchebag will die soon. Here's why. Yesterday, Twitter announced a few changes to their API. They’re steadily squeezing out third-party clients like Tweetbot, Echofon and Dabr, and they’re removing unauthenticated API calls. The latter means that every Twitter app, no matter how minor, will require a “Sign in with Twitter” button. For me, the immediate effect of this is that my Klout parody Klouchebag, along with a few other things I’ve designed, will die.1 Needless to say, I’m disappointed. Now, if you follow a small amount of people on Twitter, and they communicate using Standard English — or the equivalent in your own language — then it’s worth stepping outside the bubble every so often and doing a quick Twitter search for something like “praise God” or “One Direction”, and seeing just how often new tweets arrive.
The folks that appear in those searches are Twitter’s audience. “But wait,” I hear you say, “techies do make Twitter money! Only it wasn’t. Twitter will go on just fine without Klouchebag. Footnotes. How to Increase Your Digital Klout. JAMBOX Heaven Starts Seven Days Early for Klout Users. JAMBOX Heaven Starts Seven Days Early for Klout Users August 21st, 2012 by Matthew Thomson As you could tell from last week’s announcement about our updated Klout Score and redesigned website, we’ve been hard at work to evolve Klout in every way. We’ve always held the belief that everyone has influence, so we’re constantly on the move to find ways to bring value to all of our users. This means getting Klout influencers early access to exclusive products and experiences from top brands before they are available anywhere else. This week, Jawbone, maker of JAMBOX—the #1 best-selling wireless speaker—has stepped up in a huge way, letting Klout users experience the newest JAMBOX a full week before anyone else.
You can be the first to build your own custom JAMBOX a week before it’s available to the public. Users can mix and match between 13 grill and nine cap options to create more than 100 design combinations to represent your favorite sports team (Hello 49ers!) Klout ROI? Chevy Campaign Nets “1 Confirmed Purchase” In November of 2011, Chevy used Klout to promote the Chevrolet Sonic compact car in five different cities, loaning the car to 130 consumers with a Klout score of 45 or above.
The promotion target consumers influential in topics like music, technology, adventure and travel, and ran in Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, Atlanta and Dallas. The results? 16,000 positive consumer mentions on social media, three requests to take advantage of a special discount, and one confirmed purchase, according to MediaPost. Chevy seems satisfied with the results of its Klout-based campaigns.
Last week, the brand launched its latest Klout campaign, offering influencers a three-day loan of the 2012 Chevrolet Volt, the auto-maker’s plug-in hybrid electric car. According to a Klout spokesperson quoted in the Venturebeat story, “[Car-related perks] are definitely among the most popular perks we’ve had with Klout, and previous Chevy Perks have done very well.” What do you think? Peer Influence Analysis: What It Is & How Marketers Use It. Recently, Forrester introduced a new way to consider influence in Social Media.
We identified a group of social media participants we call Mass Influencers. While just 16% of the US population, Mass Influencers are responsible for 80% of the influence impressions and posts about products and services in social channels. As noted in the Forrester report, Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid and on the Forrester blog, Mass Influencers come in two flavors: Mass Connectors, who create a great number of impressions about brands and services in social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, and Mass Mavens, who create and share content about products and services in other social channels such as YouTube, blogs, forums, or ratings and review sites. The fact that a minority of social media participants represent the lion’s share of buzz about products and services is probably not at all surprising, but what does this mean to marketers?
Klout, Kred, Peer Index: The Year of Online Influence. If 2011 will be remembered for the irruption of Google+ onto the social media center stage, it could also be rightly defined as the year when online influence measuring came of age. Klout and its close competitors Kred and Peer Index have been busy rewriting the rules of the game at a speedy pace, and – despite their more or less obvious imperfections – there is no way back with respect to the step forward they represent and their long-term, profound implications for online reputation and personal branding. Klout came under sustained fire this year as a result of the upgrade and tweaking of their algorithm that meant that many of us lost ‘influence points’ in the process.
And at times that translated into harsh criticism of the online influence concept itself, a concept that – to be sure – needs refining and possibly redefining given the tremendous difficulty of producing accurate and hence trustworthy analytics and metrics of a multi-channel online and social media presence. What the klout. Discover Your Klout. Jeff: Dear @klout, grats on the... Conference Speaker Interview: Joe Fernandez. Joe Fernandez will be one of the speakers at our upcoming PSFK CONFERENCE SAN FRANCISCO on October 6. Joe is the founder and CEO of Klout, a platform that measures online influence and the impact users have on their friends and followers. Fascinated by the way individuals could instantly broadcast questions, opinions, and ideas to their trusted network, Joe started Klout in 2008 in an effort to help businesses understand this individual user impact by providing context around who a person effects and what topics they are particularly influential in.
In anticipation of his conversation with PSFK around the ‘Future of Online Influence’ at the PSFK CONFERENCE SAN FRANCISCO 2011, we bring you some insights from Joe: Who or what is the most recent person/entity you’ve followed on Twitter? @49ers. Getting ready for the season. What is your favorite app? I am addicted to uber and Zaarly. Show us the last photo you took with your phone? RIP Tupac and Biggie Kanye and Jay-Z – Watch the Throne. How Joe Fernandez Started Klout. How do you know you're ready to start a company? The rational, prudent answer is obvious: You start the moment you've got adequate funding, an enthusiastic team behind you, and an idea everyone agrees is brilliant. Only problem is, the rational, prudent answer is wrong. If you wait for all that, you will never launch anything. I was reminded of that fact a few months back when I interviewed Joe Fernandez, CEO and co-founder of Klout.
Here's how a recent Wired story describes Klout: Much as Google’s search engine attempts to rank the relevance of every web page, Klout is on a mission to rank the influence of every person online. The article goes on to quote a Klout executive predicting that people with formidable Klout scores "will soon board planes earlier, get free access to VIP airport lounges, stay in better hotel rooms, and receive deep discounts from retail stores and flash-sale outlets.
Fernandez had started two data companies before, one in health care and another in real estate. Freebies for Klout Users, Targeted Ads For Companies.