Klout Updates Its Scoring System and Gets a New Look

While many people dismiss Klout as an 'ego massage' tool, online influence is something that cannot be discounted in a world which is increasingly getting digital.

One of the bane of Klout was its scoring system. People found it flawed and highly inaccurate. But in face of all these criticism, Klout is trying hard to stay relevant and more realistic. Which is why they have re-jigged their scoring structure to make it more accurate.

Let's have a look at what all changes Klout has introduced:

More Data Sets

The previous version of Klout monitored signals from less than 100 data sets. But now, with data signals coming from more than 400 data sets from 7 platfroms, Klout hopes to improve its accuracy. The 7 social networks are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Wikipedia and Klout itself (+K's).

In terms of data points, Klout now analyzes more 12 billion of them (used to be 1 billion previously).

Real World Influence

Klout aims to calculate the influence of a person both online and offline. Imagine that you're doing a great work offline but somehow don't find any time to keep your friends/followers engaged on social media. You would certainly want your offline influence to be calculated, am I right?

Klout feels like that and as a first step in this direction, it has integrated Wikipedia in its scoring system. Yes, I know everyone doesn't have a Wikipedia page to himself/herself. But this is just the first step and in future I can see Klout analyzing signals from media portals and influential blogs.

Moments

What are moments? A moment is an update/post of yours which got traction from your community. These are displayed inside your Klout dashboard and let you know how influential they have been. Moments help you decipher what kind of content works within your community on different platforms so that you can put more efforts into generating more valuable content.

New Look

This seems to be the year of redesign and Klout has undergone a change as well. With an increased focus on 'moments' and an emphasis on delivering better insights, the new look of Klout hopes to become more engaging.

So what do you think of all these changes? Will it make you rethink your opinion about Klout? Or do you still think it has a long way to go?