For those not familiar with Klout, it's a measure of online influence, calculated daily based on some algorithm no one seems to understand. So things like follower count, retweets and engagement contribute - but funnily enough interactions with people who have a low or 0 Klout score actually count against you!
Don't get me wrong, if you choose to sign up to Klout and play that game (which is essentially what it is), that's up to you - but what irritates me is the spam in my twitter timeline:
I gave X a +K in Y.....or I received a +K in Y from X....or thank you X for giving me a +K in Y.....or my pet hate: please give me a +K in Y!!!! The odd one or two are fine, but some seem inclined to reel off 10-20 tweets at a time!
I likened this the other day to playing Words with Friends, which is something I enjoy doing....but I don't feel is necessary to tweet out every time I win a game, or get a particularly good score - that stays in the game, and people interested in playing see that. Surely people can see who has given/received what from within Klout? So why clutter up twitter with it, unless it's purely to gain attention of other Klouters...which is pretty sad....
Now, someone has tried to explain to me that often a person's Klout score is used by potential employers to decide whether that person even gets an interview - personally, I'd rather be able to explain to a potential employer, my reasons for not using Klout and hope they value the fact that I don't follow the crowd. If someone wants to employ people based on a dubiously calculated online score, rather than my ability to do the job, do I want to work for them anyway?
I don't have many twitter followers compared to a lot of the people who play Klout....I like to follow and interact with people I have something in common with. People who have a genuine interest in what I do on twitter, which is raising awareness of the cancer charity I volunteer for. Of course, I have other interests too, kids, travel and anything community related, so I tweet about that too. My aim isn't to 'influence' people as such, but if I can encourage someone to sign up to volunteer for something, or tweet something which raises awareness of an issue, I consider my time here well spent.
Anyway, those are my feelings on Klout....please don't try to tell me I don't understand it, quite frankly, I don't want to :-)
#rantover ;-)
Nx
