How many employees does klout have

Sure: because it was stupid. Klout took the entire spectrum of human interaction and condensed it to a two-digit number that you could use to bludgeon anyone who failed to adhere to its scoring algorithm.

It was tacky and basic and cheap. What was it? A measly 62, even though it said I was an expert in subjects such as journalism, publishing and — oh — Made in Chelsea. What does it mean now that Klout has died? It means we have entered a more sophisticated age of interaction. We have come to realise that the infinite richness of the human condition does not easily lend itself to the kind of cold, hard, robotic quantification that Klout offered.

Make no mistake, this is a beat of the drum. Klout is dead — how will people continuously rank themselves online now? Klout users were given a score between 1 and to reflect their influence on social media. Now Klout scores are being influenced by Bing searches, and when Bing provides links to people who could be experts in your search, their Klout score will be shown.

So while Klout certainly does employ a wide variety of metrics to measure your impact -- including "real world influence," which it measures from Wikipedia activity -- be aware that those measurements are being watched carefully. Not just by Klout but also by companies that want to seduce those special influencers with a high number. But here's something Klout didn't expect: Some clever Klouters are finding ways to make their Klout scores shoot up so they can grab Klout Perks without having to obsess over their social media presence.

Klout may not have been around for too long, but it has done a bang-up job of courting controversy. From the moment it broke out, there's been a real sense of anger around not just the idea of Klout but also its practices. First, we should acknowledge that lots of Internet and social media users simply find the idea of "judging" one's digital importance obnoxious, if not impossible. Several people have pointed out that it's possible to cheat the system by creating multiple accounts and thus being able to "game" your score pretty much makes most scores worthless [source: Chichester ].

You get 10 a day to hand out. But if you have multiple accounts, you can just load your own Klout up. This is also how Klout users have made conservative politician Rick Santorum a leading influencer on racism and homophobia. In no time, you could have enough Klout for some Perks. In one of the most significant controversies, it was discovered in that Klout was creating profiles for people not even registered to the service.

Doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but when people started seeing their children listed as "influencers," concern arose. After a privacy policy change, Klout no longer creates profiles, but that doesn't mean it lets unregistered social network users off. Let's just take it straight from Klout's privacy policy: "Our Services analyze data that is made available publicly through the Internet in order to measure influence and create a score "Klout Score" for Internet users, including, but not limited to, our registered users" [source: Klout ].

Get that? It means that if you have a public profile on Facebook or Twitter, guess what? Klout has given you a score. The unnerving part, for many, comes from knowing that a future employer can see your score.

Even if you couldn't care less about your score and aren't doing a thing to improve it , it appears for all intents and purposes to that employer that you're just no good at the digital future. As you can see, controversies abound with Klout. To find out more information about how it works, find yourself making an impact on the next page. As a person with a Klout score of 10 -- that is, probably the lowest score you can get if you have an obligatory Facebook page that you look at once every four months -- it's hard for me to take seriously the idea that all influence comes from retweets and likes.

But the truth is, impact is now measured with Internet and viral savvy. Although I'm loath to admit it, Klout might be right. It's not who we are -- it's who we are online that counts. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Social media outlets buzzed in when Wired magazine ran a story about Sam Fiorella, a senior executive who said he lost out on a vice president position with a large Toronto-based marketing agency because of a low Klout score.

The score is not just about the volume of posts and tweets. These services claim to assess influence by also measuring the number of retweets, mentions, comments, likes and re-shares.

A Value on Clout. Social media influence scores may measure activity and influence, but there are still questions about the quality and type of activity—and if it is job-related. A person can acquire a high Klout score by creating amusing Facebook posts, but rarely use social media to create professional influence, so using scores to assess skill may not be wise, experts add.

It is not a measure of the ability to do a job. In addition, there can be the question of whether a person with a high Klout score is actually doing the posting and tweeting at all.