Disruptive Conversations

In one image, this is perhaps what annoys me most about Klout's Klout Score metric:

Yes, even more than the fact that Beyonce can have a Klout Score of 50 without ever having tweeted (or even knowing if that Twitter account is, in fact, actually Beyonce's). Even more than that, this bothers me:

Your Klout Score fell -1 points in the past day. Share more content and engage with your network to increase your score!

Not that my score fell. As you might have guessed, I really don't care about what my score is.

What bothers me is the implication by the second sentence that you should care about your score and that you should take actions to increase your score.

Now... DUH!... I do understand why Klout does this. They of course want you to care about your score so that you can nurture it and further buy into all their programs so that they can someday attain their motto of being "the standard of influence".

I get that.

But it doesn't mean I have to like the attempts at psychological manipulation.

What annoys me is that this attitude feeds right into those people who want to "game the system"... to figure out ways to influence the influence measurement so that they can rise higher.

It's a game to some people.

And that's fine.

Farmville is a game, too... and some people enjoy playing that.

The issue is that those of us out here in the PR/marketing space would like influence measurement metrics that we could use ... and that we can grow to trust as having some value. (In the sense of being part of the equation of assessing someone's influence online.)

But it's annoying when the company behind the metric tries to get people to play that game... to try to get them to take actions to increase their score. If history has shown us anything, it is that some people out there will ALWAYS try to game the system... it's just part of human nature.

But does the company behind the metric need to encourage that behavior?

Why not just truly rate people based on the content they produce and the interaction they have with other people online?

This is what annoys me most about Klout. Influence measurement shouldn't be treated as a game.

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