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Will Klout Turn Us All Into Douchebags?

August 16, 2012 By 4 Comments

So Klout has changed it’s algorithm and will now make measuring people’s online influence ever easier. In fact, they reckon the can now even tell how influential a person is offline too. Hmmm. It seems that influence scoring isn’t going anywhere and as much as it riles me and many others, it continues to command attention. Will it effect the way we act? Perhaps…

A Bunch of Klout Douchebags

Klout has been and will continue to be used to offer people discounts and free stuff via their ‘Klout Perks’ scheme. In fact a number of businesses have even taken upon themselves to offer people preferential prices and service based on their scores. Everybody loves free stuff. If a direct effect of having high Klout levels means that people can get said free stuff and ergo feel super important, will the social web become a nasty place, full of people gaming their scores in order to get their lips round a cheap nasty Pina Coloda next time they visit Vegas? The value of the space drops as more and more people get wise to schemes like Klout.

Image courtesy of a 5 year old. Ok it was actually me. I ain’t no artist.

The Klout Super Whore

Will we see a rise of super ‘influencers’ who hold brands to ransom, brandishing their Klout score like some kind of deadly weapon? Sad, shallow people demanding free items and better service with the threat of nasty tweets and Facebook updates if the business fails to comply. Or the other side of that, a web full of false reviews due to people feeling a duty to write good testimonials purely because a business gave them something for free. The social web is built around transparency and this type of scenario could really endanger that.

But Does Klout Actually Matter?!?

Things begin to really matter when the general public and not just us techy/web types become aware of something. The press around Klout is fairly strong (Google trends tells me that searches around the service have tripled in the past two days) and this will lead to Klout and what it offers becoming more and more apparent to your average man/woman/elephant on the street. That is when the douchebags and Klout whores may well start to take over.

Are You Serious Mike?

Ok, this post may be a little sensational, however I do believe that if influence scoring really cracks the mainstream, we may well see a change in the way the social web works and a not nice one at that. Oh and one more thing, I don’t even really know what a douchebag is.

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About Mike McGrail

Mike McGrail is the owner of The Social Penguin Blog. He is in the process of setting up a digital marketing and communications consultancy. He likes scotch and leather-bound books. Follow Mike's ramblings on Twitter. He also resides on Google Plus here.

  • http://www.contently-managed.com/blog Craig McGill

    To me, this is something that “main in street” will go “wow, high Klout score and I get stuff – great” while Black Hat Social Medias will game it for clients and the good guys will go “big deal” and consider it as useful a metric as Facebook page followers because it’s easy gamed and more than likely easy enough to buy an improved score.

  • http://twitter.com/CyberSecurityRI Peter Warren

    Big business has never lost out by underestimating the greed of the general public. One of the sadder parts of life is that more people go low than high, mainly because one takes a bit more effort. I think it’s inevitable that people are bought out by things like clout scores.

    • http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com/ Mike McGrail

      Thanks Peter. We are looking at an interesting few months as this develops.
      Sent from my iPad

  • http://twitter.com/kntoepfer Kristin Toepfer

    I feel the same way about Klout (but then compulsively check my score every week). I think people care less about the perks, which are fairly lame in my opinion, than they do the bragging rights. It’s competition. When I hear that scores are being used in the hiring process, that makes me upset. There’s not enough transparency in how those scores are calculated to make it a legitimate measure of someone’s social media influence. Now to go check my score….