Holy cow I need coffee or a drink. Or maybe I should reinstate my Klout account? I can sort of see the deal with customer service and high ranking Klout customers. Sort of. Every customer should be treated well and equally. I'm sure +Peter Shankman would agree. He's called people on the phone (and surprised the hell out of them) just to answer someone's question promptly. Peter "Morton Steakhouse" Shankman!
As far as not getting hired because of your Klout score – that's BS too. Unless of course you are in 'this' field, you better damn well know what Klout is. Doesn't matter what your score is though in my opinion. I've had clients as me about my Klout score, only to have the poor people sit through a thinly veiled rant about how real influence can't be measured by the number of Tweets per hour.
From the article:
Klout is starting to infiltrate more and more of our everyday transactions. In February, the enterprise-software giant Salesforce.com introduced a service that lets companies monitor the Klout scores of customers who tweet compliments and complaints; those with the highest scores will presumably get swifter, friendlier attention from customer service reps. In March, luxury shopping site Gilt Groupe began offering discounts proportional to a customer’s Klout score.
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What Your Klout Score Really Means | Epicenter | Wired.com
Your Klout score is gaining in importance: A high one might bring perks, but a low one could dash your career dreams.
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I was ignoring my Klout stuff but after reading this article last week or whenever, I went to check and discovered I had missed out on some real perks, like actual gift cards worth real $. Darn.
hi! lynette young
I still don't get Klout—- seems that no matter how active you are on Twitter or G+ your score sucks if you aren't on facebook… and I am not.
Klout is not something I or others in my field (Systems / development IT etc) care or should care much about -its overrated and only really should apply to those who make a living on social media – I know people with very low Klout scores that could easily make life a living publicity hell for companies and others with a higher score who could not, its a fallacy spread about by Klout themselves
I use it just to keep track of which group of friends I've been neglecting… It's always, always Facebook friends lol 🙂
I think we have a natural tendency to find the one number that will predict whether or not someone will pay off. Should I hire someone with 15 years of experience? Maybe I could generate a score from their GitHub commits? (IBM is one company working on this and has a patent filing related to it). On the flip side, I help a little old lady by letting her cut in line and piss off the 23 year old who then trashes my business on her (surprisingly popular) blog. My fear is that people won't realize or forget it's a shortcut.
+Wyn Williams They're working on other techniques for developers. (i.e. scoring your GitHub commits)
we had a discussion about this at WOMMA last November when the Klout product guy was on a panel. A British consultant asked how fair it was that a company would not answer a customer in social, yet when she brought the issue to their attention (while holding a decent following and Klout score), they would respond. I tweeted about the exchange at the time. Looking for shortcuts to judge worth is not new, of course. I opted out of Klout entirely – does that mean I don't exist. For heavens' sake, let's think about this for a moment.
I have written about how customer service is not fair in social http://www.conversationagent.com/2011/01/why-customer-service-in-social-is-not-fair.html – reminds me of the "photo opp" moment in some environment, being "seen" do something, etc.
The enormity and implications of looking for shortcuts over keeping your business promises should not escape us. All chasing page views…
+Wyn Williams In academia, no one cares. That doesn't say much because many don't care about blogging or socmed in general. Luckily a Klout score will never affect what I want to do career-wise.
The article is important for awareness. Times are a changing, at rocket speed.
+Constance Korol you are right. I first heard from a fellow who was looking for a new job related to web work and social media. He was obsessively checking his Klout score. That's where I first realized Klout made itself "valuable" however artificially. He had already lost out on one job to someone else with a higher score.
where we put our attention +Constance Korol that's what we encourage. There goes the "want it or not, it's here" theory.
I went off my rocker +Lynette Young when this was first posted. Especially what the Palms was doing before each guest check in. It brought back memories of what Morton's did last year.
http://mckainviewpoint.com/2011/08/mortons-pr-stunt-or-ultimate-customer-experience-%C2%AE/
For me this type of stuff is not genuine and the motive behind it is to get some word of mouth going for an big influencer online. I agree this is not treating all customers the same.
What about the people who don't use social media that still have a big network? What about the people who don't have the high Klout score?
You can give perks to people who spent a lot to with you. But that isn't the same as what these companies are doing by judging one's Klout score. "I hope you like your upgrade so much that you blog and or Tweet about it to your 100k followers". Disgusting!
In the end people can game their Klout score very easily and fool these businesses into thinking they're an influencer.
I am already seeing some fun effects of Klout. Receiving new products from well known and new brands as well as experiences like Bamboozle show with Bon Jovi.
+Paul Hoehne I would have a very low GitHUB commit score 🙂 but I have been heavily involved in FOSS for many years and run many services and systems for different communities, so how would Klout then be relevant ? I see it fading in a year or two
Klout claims to monitor your popularity across all social networks… but you need to log in with Facebook or Twitter.
Pff.
+Wyn Williams You are absolutely right, it wouldn't matter. The danger I see is that we develop more synthetic measures of someone's effectiveness (such as GitHUB commits) and then base decisions on that score. It's a natural tendency, like comparing cars by their horsepower. It doesn't work for tractor trailers where torque is also very important (along with many other factors). It doesn't really work with race cars either, as the horsepower is only one factor in overall performance. People are lazy and afraid to make bad decision. If you put something in front of them like a Gartner recommendation, or other synthetic score, they can shortcut the hard decision process.
Klout encourages the worst social media behavior, and turns each of you into that MLM affiliate at work everyone avoids. Enjoy the perks — they're more expensive than you believe.