Fliptop Social Scoring

What’s the Score? The Ultimate Guide to Social Scoring

WHAT’S THE SCORE? The Ultimate Guide to Social Scoring

Author: James Carson

@mrjamescarson


Introduction If you’re online, the chances are you use social

media. A survey by Pew Internet research in

February 2013 found that 67% of all US Internet

users regularly visited social media sites; for those

aged 18-29, this was closer to 90%.

Social media has become a ubiquitous

communication method for millennials. It is also

the catalyst for the explosion in human data;

more information has been produced in the last

two years than the rest of human history

combined, and 43% of the data gathered on

people comes from social media.

As you access sites like Facebook, Twitter and

Google+ you leave what’s been called a ‘digital

exhaust’ of unstructured personal data. From this,

your connections, your updates and your media

creation can be measured, whether or not you

consent.

While Facebook is often touted as a ‘walled

garden’ due to the login, a vast amount of the

interactions are public. If you change your privacy

settings, you can only see a limited amount of

information about yourself through accessing the

Facebook Graph API, but many people choose to

share more information, or are ignorant of their

privacy settings. Unless you choose to have a

private account on Twitter, then everything you

share is public information. Think about all of

your Facebook statuses and tweets ever – if you’re

a daily user, that’s a lot of information.

The growth in this kind of public data led to

people wanting to measure it, and this in turn led

to the creation of social scoring companies. Out

there in the big data swirl, for better or worse, you

are being assigned a number – your digital

exhaust is being collected and analysed, and you

are given a score to determine how influential

you are. This score can then be passed onto other

companies who may want to interact with you.

In some respects, social scoring presents a

revolutionary business opportunity; marketers

have long sought the amplification of influencers

to help spread their most important messages.

When a publicly available score indicates this, the

time spent finding influential people decreases.

With a list of influencers willing to promote

products, marketers no longer have to rely as

much on advertising or traditional PR to get the

word out. It’s a new era of the ‘citizen influencer.’

But social scoring is a topic that divides crowds.

There has been something of a public backlash

against measurements that people may not have

consented to, and the apparent arbitrariness of a

‘score’ for influence.

In his book Return on Influence: The Revolutionary

Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence

Marketing, Mark Schaefer writes, “I’m fascinated

by this intersection of unprecedented business

opportunity and extreme personal loathing.” At

Fliptop, a user of publicly available social

information, we’re fascinated too, so we created

this guide to better explain the realities behind

social scoring.

650,000 shares on Facebook650,000 shares on Facebook650,000 shares on Facebook650,000 shares on Facebook

100,000 tweets100,000 tweets100,000 tweets100,000 tweets

every minuteevery minuteevery minuteevery minute

“I’m fascinated by this intersection

of unprecedented business

opportunity and extreme personal

loathing.”

Mark Schaefer

Page 1


The Rise of Social Scoring In 2007 Joe Fernandez had jaw surgery and his

jaw was wired shut – even his mom couldn’t

understand anything he said. The only way he

could communicate was through social media. As

he did so, he began to realise that this new

medium was measurable. As people conversed,

their interactions would be recorded. Word of

mouth was now scalable and the data was there

to measure it.

When he could talk again in 2008, he moved to

New York City and attempted to get his friends

interested in a business idea that matched his

realisation. But social media usage was not

ubiquitous at this time – and Twitter was only

really getting started – thus Joe couldn’t

persuade his friends as to why it would be so

important. Unperturbed, he couldn’t stop

thinking about the idea of measuring online

influence, so he hired a team in Singapore to

develop it. He publicly launched Klout in

December 2008, and the next month he went to

the New York tech meetup, nervous about

presenting what he had determined as ‘the

standard for influence’. But he received a warm

reception, and his company was born.

Klout aimed to take publicly available data from

social networks and combine this to create a

point’s score, which is a measurement of

influence. A year later in London, social analytics

company PeerIndex was born, while in 2011 Kred

was introduced by San Francisco based

PeopleBrowsr. There are numerous other services

that assign scores to social media activity, but

Klout, Kred and PeerIndex are generally seen as

the leading companies for measuring influence,

with Klout being the largest. Indeed, Klout

receives more hits to its API from third party

applications that all competitors combined.

“In late 2007 I had jaw surgery that left

my jaw wired shut for three months.

During that time I had to completely

rely on Twitter and Facebook to

communicate. This experience really

changed the way looked at these

platforms.

The fact that I could instantly tell the

people who trusted me the most my

opinion on anything was amazing to

me. It was the realization that word of

mouth was scalable for the first time

and even more exciting was the fact

that the data was there to measure it. I

became obsessed with the idea of every

person understanding and being

recognized for their influence and

Klout was born.”

Joe Fernandez talking to The Tokyo Times

Page 2


How is a Social Score Worked Out? Social scoring systems gather data from a range

of different public data sources and use an

algorithm to determine the score. While no one

has resorted to completely giving away the secret

sauce, they are all quite transparent about how

the score is worked out.

PeerIndex explains on its help page:

“The PeerIndex algorithm recognizes the speed

and quantity by which users spot, share (and thus

endorse) content on any specific topic. Our

content recommendation decisions can thus be

used as a proxy to measure our knowledge and

authority in a specific subject area. Your authority

on a subject is affirmed when the content you

share is approved - i.e. Retweeted, Facebook

Shared, +1'ed or commented on, by someone

else with authority on the subject.”

Of course, since it’s an algorithm, the scores can

potentially be gamed, and if there are benefits to

gaining a better score, then some people will

always try to cheat it. There have been numerous

blog posts about how it’s possible to game Klout,

with examples of spambots being able to raise

scores simply for being active. However, many of

the posts pointing out flaws were published in

2011. Since then, the social scoring companies

have become much better at measuring

inauthentic behaviour, and carefully working

spambots out of the algorithm.

“Despite decades of research and

formulation of theories of influence

in sociology, marketing,

psychology, and political science,

there has been no tangible way to

measure this force rapidly,

inexpensively, and across a broad

population. Until now.”

Mark Schaefer

“Social influence data as it stands

today is based primarily on one

core metric: public social profiles

and footprints. So if you have your

Twitter account set to public, then

companies like Klout and Kred will

create you a ‘profile’ and allocate

you a score, based on their

algorithm.”

Danny Brown – Beyond Social Scoring –

The Situational Factor of Influence

“The potential for gaming of scores

is something we’ve been aware of

from the very beginning and a lot of

the work in our algorithm has been

to identify ‘true’ influence.”

Azeem Azhar, CEO of PeerIndex

Page 3


What Factors Make Up a Klout Score? Klout uses more than 400 signals from eight different networks to update the score. It states:

“The majority of the signals used to calculate the Klout Score are derived from combinations of attributes,

such as the ratio of reactions you generate compared to the amount of content you share. For example,

generating 100 retweets from 10 tweets will contribute more to your Score than generating 100 retweets

from 1,000 tweets. We also consider factors such as how selective the people who interact with your content

are. The more a person likes and retweets in a given day, the less each of those individual interactions

contributes to another person's Score. Additionally, we value the engagement you drive from unique

individuals. One-hundred retweets from 100 different people contribute more to your Score than do 100

retweets from a single person.”

In simple terms, Klout explains it to be:

You x Your Topics x How You Talk About

Them x How People React = Your Influence

Page 3


Why Do We Need Social Scoring?As social media came of age during 2008-2009

and became a serious marketing channel, the

number of metrics that could be used exploded.

Traffic referrals, YouTube views, Twitter followers,

blog comments and Facebook Likes had all been

added to the metric soup.

As the number of possible metrics grew,

marketers became increasingly confused as to

how to tie this back to company Return on

Investment. This was not a direct response

channel like search or email, and tracking actual

transactions was difficult.

In an exasperated response, marketing strategist

Dave Berkowitz created a blog post entitled ‘100

ways to measure social media’. There was clearly

no shortage metrics, but Berkowitz’s post

paradoxically highlighted an embarrassment of

riches: there were now too many metrics and

marketers were progressively dumbfounded.

How does having more blog comments or

retweets translate into transactions? It’s a tricky

question, and one that can’t be answered in

general terms.

The Problem with

Connection Counts Many marketers began to rely on social

connection counts as the key indicator of social

media performance – particularly influence.

Indeed, in the Technorati 2013 Digital Influence

Report, Twitter Followers and Facebook Friends

still came out on top as the metric to measuring

influencer attributes. But there’s a hitch – it’s easy

to buy fake Twitter followers and other fake

connections.

A recent article by Kevin Ashton, called ‘How to

become Internet famous for $68’ illustrated the

fallacy of credibility and influence being

determined by having a large number of social

followers or connections. He simply set up a

Twitter profile for a Mexican motivational speaker

called ‘Santiago Swallow’, bought 90,000

followers from Fiverr.com for $50, set up a

Wikipedia page and a personal website while

playing a number of other tricks to increase this

character’s ‘fame’. Only that Santiago Swallow

was entirely made up.

Serious Business Faking social followings and YouTube viewing

counts is a serious business, which is not confined

to the realms of the entirely virtual. In the 2012

Presidential race, there was plenty of speculation

that Mitt Romney’s campaign team buying fake

followers after sudden boosts in follower counts –

although this could have been done by third

parties. President Obama was far from squeaky

clean either, with USA Today reporting that up to

70% of his 18.8 million followers (as of April 2012)

were fake.

Just type ‘buy fake followers’ or ‘youtube view

clickfarm’ into Google, and you’ll be presented

with a glut of websites offering services. It’s easy

to buy fake followers, thus social following and

view counts are regularly disingenuous. For this

reason, for many marketers they’ve come to be

seen as a fairly meaningless vanity metric when

viewed in isolation. If you have 100,000 followers

but nothing else – much like Santiago Swallow –

there is very little value given by the followers.

Using social connection counts as a Key

Performance Indicator is therefore somewhat of a

fallacy.

In our Marketer’s Time Saving

Survey, 22.7% of marketers

stated that they felt the difficulty in

quantifying ROI was the single

biggest problem with modern

marketing.

Page 4


Finding True Influence Simply using the most available metric – the

number of social connections – is clearly

troublesome for determining influence. It is not

so much the number of connections that

someone has, as the number of connections their

connections have, and the propensity of those

connections to engage with other people and

amplify their message. Measuring this

amplification is a key factor in social scoring.

But how do you find these influential people?

Clicking around Twitter in an effort to find the

influential people around a particular topic can

be time consuming. Social scoring can often aid

this process; through passing on an ‘influencer

score’, marketers are able to find influencers to

connect with quickly.

Finding and engaging influencers has become a

particularly important facet of both social media

and organic search marketing (SEO). Should you

be able to gain kudos from influential people,

that kudos may be seen by a wide pool of other

influencers and potential customers – which

presents value.

“If John is followed by 50,000 people

who have no followers of their own, he is

in a world of hurt compared with Jane,

who is followed by 10,000 people who

are each followed by 1,000 others. The

guarantee of creating an opportunity to

see for 50,000 pales next to the

opportunity to see for 10 million. Even if

you assume that only a fraction of them

retweet – say 10 percent – you’ve still

reached 1.1 million.”

Jim Sterne, Social Media Metrics

“It’s like the reverse of a sales funnel.

The traditional advertising approach

is to hit as many people as possible

and a few will funnel out at the

bottom. We’re hitting a few key

influencers at the bottom and letting

them tell the story to pass it up

through the wider part of the funnel.”

Joe Fernandez

Page 5


The Benefits of Social Scoring Social scoring assigns an ‘influence’ score to

people who are active on social media. You might

be thinking, ‘So what? It’s just another number.’

But as the social scoring companies matured,

they came up with a number of methods for

monetization, particularly in their ability to match

people they deem to be influential with brands.

The primary method of monetization is through a

‘perks’ program, which both Klout and PeerIndex

run. Indeed PeerIndex has positioned itself as a

company that ‘brings you exclusive rewards,

offers and discounts because brands want

influential people like you to try their products.’

The homepage of the site offers money off for a

seemingly random collection of products, but

linking up a Facebook or Twitter account brings

much more relevant offers.

Klout’s Perks program has existed since 2010, and

has enjoyed quite a high profile history. The perks

have often raised eyebrows in the marketing

world and made it into the tech press, while the

company has been able to partner with illustrious

names such as Chevrolet, Audi and Disney. It’s

been tremendously successful for Klout, with CEO

Joe Fernandez claiming that 80% of companies

who sign up for a perks program come back for

more.

An Abridged History of Klout Perks

One of the most interesting prospects for

marketers is that for every person invited to a

campaign, around 30 pieces of content are

created. Influencers are targeted, approached,

and if they like the campaign, they will become

advocates through expressing their satisfaction

on social media.

“Influencer marketing is about targeting your promotional spend at the people who have real influence amongst their network of contacts. Deals services like Groupon give money off deals to all and sundry, meaning that you’re largely going to end up targeting low-value deal hunters.”

Azeem Azhar June 23 – August 23, 2010

In 2010, Klout was asked by Virgin

America to find a small group of

influencers to spread the word about

their new Toronto route. Free

roundtrip flights to San Francisco or LA

were given to Klout’s top 120 Twitter

influencers, who in turn tweeted 4,600

times about the new route.

2010

2011

2012

2013

September 8-15, 2011

To coincide with New York Fashion

Week, Floridian Bal Harbour Shops ran

an exclusive event where entry was

given based on a Klout score of 40 or

higher. Klout also gained publicity by

ranking the Top 10 Fashion Week

Designers according to their score.

May 9th, 2012

Coinciding with the launch of Klout for

iPhone, the company gave visitors to

San Francisco International Airport

with a Klout score of 40 or higher

exclusive access to Cathay Pacific

Airways lounge, usually reserved for

business class passengers.

19th March, 2013

Klout introduced Klout for Business an

analytical dashboard for business

owners to measure their interactivity

with influencers alongside Klout Perks.

Page 6


Going Beyond the PerksPerks appear to be just the beginning for social

scoring. The data captured by companies

involved could be used for a wider range of

measurement, and is likely to play an increasing

role in a data driven society.

Employment According to an April 2012 survey by

Careerbuilder.com, 37% of employers will view a

candidate’s social media presence before an

interview. Social scoring gives a quick indication

for an employer around an interviewee’s online

influence – something that is likely to become

more important in marketing jobs, as social

media expertise becomes an essential skill. Mark

Schaefer’s book Return on Influence begins with

the example of marketing professional Sam

Fiorella, who was rejected for a job for having an

apparently lowly Klout score of 45.

Personal Finance A recent article in The Economist described how

lenders and small banks are experimenting using

consumers’ social media activity and score to

analyse their ability to repay loans. This is

becoming particularly important in African

countries, where credit bureaus are

underdeveloped. Apparently having professional

contacts on LinkedIn are “especially revealing of

an applicant’s character and capacity to repay”.

One start-up US lender, Movenbank has launched

CRED, a financial credibility score that uses a

combination of financial wellness, social media

metrics, and transactional insight, to assess a

lender’s financial health. CRED uses the figure to

calculate your monthly fees and interest rates,

amongst others. The bank even offers members’

rewards and incentives, including lower interest

rates, for promoting the company on social

networks and getting friends to sign up.

It’s also very likely that your social media activity

will affect your insurance premiums. Not only can

insurers look at public social media feeds for

confirmation of your whereabouts or activities

during claim periods, but your social score may

be an indicator of personal credibility.

Social Currency Evidently, social currency is already in operation

with the perks programs offered by social scoring

companies. Perks effectively pay recipients

through their benefits, whether they be in

experiences or trials of material goods.

Paywithatweet.com has been used

4.5 million

times to pay for goods

There are also a number of ways that you can pay

for goods through Twitter. With

paywithatweet.com, products can be sold for the

price of a tweet, and this has been a popular

exchange for selling documents on the web –

indeed, this has occured 4.5 million times. Last

year, a Twitter activated vending machine created

PR for BOS Ice Tea, while Twitter itself has also

experimented with the concept.

A Twitter activated vending machine

Page 7


Search Engine Optimisation For a long time, Google’s algorithm has relied on

a system called PageRank, which ranks the value

of a web document according to its citations

(links) from the quality and quantity of other

documents. With the social web, citation has

become increasingly fragmented; people now

share documents via social media at a far greater

rate than websites link to each other.

Additionally, who created the document, and who

linked to it, has not been factored in. With the

launch of Google+, and the verification of

authorship, this seems very likely to change.

Indeed, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt

has hinted at Google’s desire to use verified

profiles in order to rank search results.

In September 2012, Bing announced a

partnership to ‘strengthen social search and

influence online’, and more recently, it has been

announced that Klout Expert Answers will go to

the top of Bing’s search results. Much like Google,

Microsoft was watching as social media and web

search became increasingly merged. As citations

and shares from social profiles continues to grow,

the ability to rank these citations for a searcher

will become paramount. Social scoring offers a

valuable method for working this out.

How to Improve Your Social

Score Since having a higher social score can lead to

perks, you may be wondering how you can

improve it and join the party. It’s important to

stay active 5-7 days a week, keep your visibility

high across all social platforms, post engaging

content, and stay true to your personal brand.

Remember: it’s not about the number of friends

and followers you have; rather, it’s about your

ability to move content through an interested

network.

1. Plan and Build Your Network

Find a topic of interest (this could be related to

your job, or a hobby) and search for people

around that topic. Don’t be afraid to connect with

people with low social connections or social

scores - it won’t affect your personal influence,

and can be beneficial for you in the long run.

2. Create Meaningful Content

Creating compelling content that connects with

an audience is crucial. Provide links, new articles,

rich media (video, photos) coupled with tweets,

to create content that people can benefit from.

Stay on topic with content you want to be

associated with to increase your topical influence

score.

3. Start Conversations

Ask questions about your topics at high posting

periods. For instance, if you’re interested in

particular TV shows, tweet about them when

they’re on air to drive engagement. Aim to get

retweets and drive conversations.

4. Engage with Influencers

Follow leaders in a chosen topic and jump into

conversations. Retweet, respond to questions,

but make sure you can answer back.

5. Link all Your Social Network Accounts

On Klout, you can link up to 8 social networks.

You might be most active on Facebook and

Twitter, but if you’re on others, connecting them

can contribute to your score too.

“Within search results, information

tied to verified online profiles will

be ranked higher than content

without such verification, which

will result in most users naturally

clicking on the top (verified)

results. The true cost of remaining

anonymous then, might be

irrelevance.”

Eric Schmidt

Page 8


The Social Scoring Backlash In the introduction we highlighted that social

scoring was a topic that polarised opinion. So

along with explaining the benefits of the systems,

it’s important that we also detail some of the

concerns.

You Can’t Put a Score on

Influence Perhaps the main objection around social scoring

is that ‘you can’t put a score on influence’, and

that the numbers are simply meaningless. After

all, measuring a person’s online interaction and

conversations is not the same as measuring their

ability to influence decisions. Offline influence is

not practically measurable in the same way, since

a much smaller proportion of offline

conversations are recorded. Consequently, there

have been some odd results; it wasn’t until an

update to Klout’s algorithm in April 2012 that

Barack Obama surpassed Justin Bieber on Klout.

Influential on {random topic} People have also been critical of the seemingly

random assortment of topics that people might

be seen as influential on, which are mistakes in

interpretation by the algorithm. For instance,

Klout mentions one of my topics to be ‘angel

investing’ – a subject I have seldom discussed or

mentioned in a social media conversation. While

Klout does a pretty good job with my topics –

SEO, social media and books –I’ve seen enough

tweets expressing confusion at topic selection. ‘It

thinks I’m knowledgeable about pizza,’ I’ve seen a

social friend say – but it’s really that they’ve been

talking about ordering a pizza in the last couple

of days.

Algorithms can be gamed Fundamentally, Klout is an algorithm, and while

Klout does occasionally make human based

tweaks to profiles and scores, a lot of people have

expressed doubts about having their personal

merit reduced to an online figure – particularly

when they haven’t opted in. We’re potentially left

with unsettling feeling: social scoring is a

combination of technology and personal brand

that directly correlates the success, failures or

even the lack of our online persona with reality.

Suddenly, personality is reduced down to a series

of calculations and algorithms, rather than true

human influence – which is by its nature

extremely difficult to put a figure on.

It’s also just as possible to game algorithms as

much as it’s possible to buy fake followers. Just

like SEO and Google, there are plenty of people

looking at ways to take shortcuts with social

scores to gain perks. Even buying fake followers

can potentially increase your social score.

Social Media Hierarchy Furthermore, since scores are often heightened

by interaction with people who are more

influential, it creates a hierarchical system – a

digital elite that get to ‘go behind the velvet rope’

and enjoy perks. By its nature, this seems rather

against the flat democratic structure of the web,

so lauded in books like The Cluetrain Manifesto. In

some respects, social scoring could be seen as an

antagonist to some of the web’s key benefits.

Perhaps Klout’s most difficult period came in

Autumn 2011. First of all an algorithm update hit

a number of Klout scores significantly, and people

took to Twitter using #OccupyKlout to protest

their vexation.

Privacy Concerns Just a month later, the New York Times added to

this controversy by highlighting that Klout was

creating profiles for minors. Klout CEO Joe

Fernandez responded in a blog post stating the

‘We Value Your Privacy’ and quickly rolled

changes back, stating on the subject of privacy on

the social web: ‘like Facebook, Google, and nearly

every other company in this space, we are

working hard to figure this out, but will not

always get everything right.’

Of course Klout is aware of the cases against

social scoring – and CEO Joe Fernandez has been

extremely active on social media himself to

counter them. Social scoring companies cannot

access private social media data unless you give

them direct access by signing up to their services.

If you are concerned about your online privacy,

then it is your social profile privacy settings,

rather than social scoring companies, that you

should be concerned with. Additionally, even if

your profile is public and you want to keep it so, it

is possible to opt out of Klout on their privacy

page.

.

Page 9


Social Scoring and the Future: The Age of Big Data “The 1:1 future holds immense implications for individual privacy, social

cohesiveness, and the alienation and fractionalization that could come from the

breakdown of mass media. It will change forever how we seek our information,

education, and entertainment, and how we pursue our happiness.”

This quote was taken from Don Pepper’s and

Martha Roger’s seminal work The One to One

Future: Bulding Relationships One Customer at a

Time, published in 1993. Twenty years on, it

seems as relevant today as it did then; we are on

the verge of another data revolution – and the

future looks bigger this time.

Social scoring was born out of the availability of

public social media data. We’re now entering the

age of ‘Big Data’ and there’s a clear opportunity

for social scoring to be an important player in a

new era.

For consumers, there are four main ingenuities

that will drive the amount of recorded data:

The Ubiquity of Smartphones:

In the Western World,

smartphone saturation is likely

to come in the next two years.

In 2014, mobile Internet traffic

will surpass desktop Internet

traffic. The applications used in

smartphone ubiquity will record

much more of our existence.

Augmented Reality: While it’s existed through

smart mobile devices for some time, augmented

reality has yet to ‘tip’ – largely because

smartphones are not great devices for creating it.

However, Google Glass will be released to the

general public in 2014 – this is likely to be the

augmented reality game

changer. The amount

of recorded real world

data will increase as

such devices are

distributed.

The Internet of Things: Imagine a kettle that

told you it needed to be replaced because it was

below the efficiency recommended by an energy

company’s database. Household objects will

slowly become integrated into the World Wide

Web and their actions measured and recorded.

The Quantified Self: There will be more and

more applications that allow us to measure

ourselves, whether that be in our work life

productivity, or in our physical prowess. To some

degree, the quantified self already exists with

applications like Nike+ and Fuel Band, but the

number of possible data points will likely

explode.

Data production is estimated

to be 44 times higher in 2020

than it was in 2009

What we’re facing is a data mountain – such a

tidal force of measurement that it will take some

serious algorithms to make sense of it all.

Social scoring will likely adapt as more data

points become available. For instance, with the

Internet of Things, Augmented Reality and

Quantified Self, it will occur that far more

activities which we now consider ‘offline’ will be

recorded. Thus what is interpreted to be ‘real

world’ influence can also be better explored.

We are just at the beginning. Companies who

have already been exploring social influence are

well positioned to make sense of the data

mountain. Having crunched a wide range of

factors to come up with numbers for influence,

they will look for new ways to interpret the new

influx of data points – whether it to be to

contribute to the social scoring eco-systems or

new ventures.

Page 10


References and Citations

Social Media • Pew Internet: Social Networking

• Filtering the digital exhaust by Laura Hazard Owen on Gigaom

• Getting Started: The Graph API

How Klout Was Started • Where did Joe Fernandez go in Singapore to build Klout? on Quora

• Founder Stories: Joe Fernandez of Klout by Ejovi Newere on The Tokyo Times

• The Remarkable Story of How Klout Was Founded by Mashable Video

How Social Scoring Works • How is my PeerIndex calculated?

• The Klout Score – How it Works

• Beyond Social Scoring – The Situational Factor of Influence by Danny Brown

• Here is How You Can Game Klout by Yousaf Sekander on Rocket Mill

Problems with Social Media Measurement • 100 Ways to Measure Social Media by David Berkowitz on Marketer’s Studio

• How to become Internet famous for $68 by Kevin Ashton on Quartz

• Mitt Romney’s Fake Twitter Follower Problem by Will Oremus

• Obama has millions of fake Twitter followers by David Jackson on USA Today

• Which Celebs Have Been Buying Fake Followers? by Adi Gaskell on Technorati

• Fake YouTube Views Cut By 2 Billion As Google Audits Record Companies’ Video Channels on Huffington

Post

• How to use social proof to increase conversions by Blair Keen on Econsultancy

• Q&A: PeerIndex CEO Azeem Azhar by Vikki Chowney on Econsultancy

Klout Perks • Klout for Business

• Cathay Pacific Opens SFO Lounge to Klout Users by Don Hoang on The Official Klout Blog

• You must have a Klout score of 40 or more to get into this Fashion’s Night Out party by Sherilynn Macale

on The New Web

• Top 10 Fashion Week Designers by Lan Nguyen on The Official Klout Blog

• Spotlight on Klout Perks: Virgin America Campaign by Megan Berry on The Official Klout Blog

Improving Your Social Score • 5 tips on how to improve your Klout score by Ayelet Noff on Social Media.biz

• How to Improve Your Klout Score by Kayla Maratty on Digital Investments

• 7 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Klout Score on Mashable

Social Scoring and Personal Finance • Employers are Scoping Out Candidates on Social Media – But What Are They Finding? Infographic on

Careerbuilder.com

• Stat Oil: Lenders are turning to social media to assess borrowers on The Economist

• Movenbank Announces Completion of US$2.41m Seed Round Funding on PR Web

• The Facebook mortgage. Could social data be used for credit scores? By Craig Le Grice on Econsultancy

• Paywithatweet.com

• Twitter-Activated Vending Machine Launched in South Africa by Mfonobong Nsehe on Forbes

• NO CASH? Don’t worry – our vending machine dispenses goodies for a single Tweet.

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Social Scoring and SEO • From Authorship to Authority: Why Claiming Your Identity Matters #smxlondon by Gianluca Fiorelli on

State of Search

• Ranking Authors in Social Media Systems Microsoft Patent

• Identity as a search ranking factor by Peter Meinertzhagen on Econsultancy

• Bing and Klout Partner to Strengthen Social Search and Online Influence on Bing Search Blog

Social Scoring and Privacy • When Sites Drag the Unwitting Across the Web by Somini Sengupta on New York Times

• We Value Your Privacy by Joe Fernandez on the The Official Klout Blog

• Klout and Your Privacy

Cited Books: • The One to One Future: Bulding Relationships One Customer at a Time by Don Pepper’s and Martha

Rogers

• The Cluetrain Manifesto, various authors

• Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing by Mark

Schaefer

• Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin

• Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment by Jim Sterne

Influential People on Twitter Relevant to Social Scoring: • Kevin Ashton – Author of How to become Internet famous for $65

• Mark Schaefer – Author of Return on Influence

• Joe Fernandez – CEO of Klout

• Azeem Azhar – CEO of Peer Index

About the Author James Carson is a digital marketing consultant based in London. He is a regular writer for Econsultancy, State

of Search and Smart Insights, as well as a regular speaker on digital marketing topics in the UK.

• Follow him on Twitter

• Find him on Google+

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