5 Reasons Why Klout is Out (and Kred is In)

Does a number mean anything when it comes to your social media influence? Well that depends on which number you are looking at.

If the number you are using to measure your social media clout is your Klout score (pun intended), then it might be time to say with so many others that “Klout is out”. Many social media pros and novices alike seem to be gravitating toward other social media scoring services, like Kred, to more meaningfully measure their social media influence.

Successful social media marketing hinges on influencing the right people. And measuring your influence is one of the first steps down the path to social media success. What you use to measure the success – or, God forbid, failure – of your social media efforts will vary by your type of business, your marketing goals… and other factors. But, there are some ubiquitous measures that apply to pretty much every type of business, organization, or individual. And influence is one of the standard metrics you should be tracking.

In late 2011, Klout revamped its score to the point where many now question what, if any, meaning it holds. If I don’t know what I’m being measured against and neither does anyone else, then what’s the point (rhetorical question)? Social media is not about some arbitrary number, which seems to be the direction Klout continues to move in. Rather, it is all about influence. And I (and many others) agree that any score that does not transparently (to some degree) measure just that, “is out”!

Scores like Kred are not perfect by a long shot (what social media influence score is?), but Kred is the following:

1. More objective and concrete

than Klout. This is important for the rest of us, especially since so much of social influence measurement is still in flux/in its relative infancy. We need to know what is being measured.

• “Social media-loving ninjas, gurus, and wizards may once have touted their Klout. But if the recent spate of criticisms over the company’s privacy, transparency, and methodology is any indication, these days, Klout is out.” – Adweek
• “Remember that time that astrologers decided that they had gotten all the zodiac signs off by one, and everyone was so bewildered because all of a sudden you were NO LONGER AN ARIES BUT A PISCES and it seemed like everything you had believed for so long was untrue. Well the social media equivalent happened today for startup Klout and its “scores”…” from the article entitled: ‘Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score’ – TechCrunch

2. More transparent

in stark contrast to Klout’s secret ‘formula’ which no one seems to know or understand.

• Kred says it is “the first totally transparent social scoring system to evaluate influence among communities and reward generosity.”
• “The biggest difference between your Kred score and your Klout score is a quality of mystery. Kred details exactly how user scores are tabulated. Furthermore, Kred lets users add “real world” accomplishments such as employment or being involved in charity work.” – Mashable
• “As far as any of us know, one’s Klout score is determined by college interns, each feverishly rolling a pair of ten-sided dice, and then that number is allowed to oscillate within a random but bounded range every day to give the appearance that something’s going on.” – CNNMoney

3. More on target

when it comes to measuring what everyone wants to know anyway: mentions by others (influence), mentions of others (outreach). And Kred actually shows you how it arrived at your score. Imagine that. With the Klout Score, it is largely unclear what is being measured.

4. More accurate

due the massive amount of data used to calculate its score (which goes back 1000 days!). Kred also takes into account offline/non-public influence factors.

• “The company pays (dearly, apparently) for unique access to Twitters full “fire hose” of tweets, synthesizing them to sort influencers by communities of interests, as opposed to Klout’s topical “+K” categorization. Like Klout, the company assigns an influence score, but it also grades by how much you share the love, a metric it calls “outreach level.”” – Adweek

5. More potential (potentially)

to be liked and used/trusted by the majority vs. Klout. No one knows for sure how social media scores will play out, but people like transparency and are compelled by the concrete. Kred offers both. Klout lacks both.

• “[Klout] has been taking a lot of fire from critics after making some changes to the way it calculates that influence – an algorithm update that resulted in lower Klout scores for many users. This led to howls of outrage on the company’s blog, as well as a number of posts arguing that Klout scores are effectively meaningless, since no one really knows how the score is calculated.” – GigaOM
• “Like most people who gave Klout a try for the first time today, I really have no idea how it works. But that’s okay, because I’m pretty sure my Klout score doesn’t matter at all, to anyone.” from the article entitled: ‘Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score’ – TechCrunch

Measure social media success by what matters – your social media influence “today vs. yesterday” (e.g., Is my influence improving or declining? Why? And by how much?). Kred measures this. And as for Klout, well no one is quite sure what it measures.

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