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What You Can Learn about Gaming from Klout +K
I’m not a fan of Klout. Determining influence based on how someone participates online (mostly Twitter) is baloney. For instance, it shows I’m more influential than Jay Leno, which is just laughable.
But I have to hand it to them. With the launch of +K, they’ve incorporated four elements of gaming that makes me envious…and make me want to log into my account every day.
Game Dynamics
Last week Lisa Gerber wrote about the four game dynamics that drive game play, according to Seth Preibatsch, chief ninja of SCVNGR. If you didn’t watch his TedX video from her blog post, I recommend it. I’m not a video person, but it’s the best 12 minutes I’ve spent in a long time (other than cycling).
But my point is that Klout has figured out how to use all four of the dynamics he discusses with +K: Appointment, influence and status, progression, and community.
Appointment. The idea here is that you create a reason for people to come back at a specific time. Klout does this by giving you five +K points to award to friends each day. That certainly makes me want to login and treat my friends.
Influence. It’s not a surprise Klout is trying to determine influence, based on how you use Twitter and Facebook. But what they’ve done with +K is let your friends determine your influence. They give you a list of topics (some of them wrong; see “the cons?”) and you can vote on where you think they’re most influential.
Progression. This aspect was already incorporated into the dashboard. When you add your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles, you like them on Facebook, and you tweet your score, you get an A+ in filling out your profile. They give you granular ways to easily complete the process.
Community. While they don’t fully have the community piece figured out, what is there goes hand-in-hand with influence. If you and your friends band together, you can help each other create and keep a leadership position. For what? Klout Perks, I guess. Or a high Klout score, perhaps.
The Cons?
Yesterday I tweeted, “According to Klout, I’m influential in ‘drugs’ and ‘Army.’”
Say what?
Sure, it also lists me as influential in social media strategy, blogging, entrepreneurship, Chicago, and marketing. But drugs and Army? I guess my cocaine-filled dance parties that I have with the Army every night are seeping into my Twitter stream. Oy.
That tweet garnered some pretty funny responses.
Lisa Young said she’s influential for Flintstones and Phoenix. She lives in Flint, Mich., so maybe they made a connection to Flintstones that way, but Phoenix?
And R.J. Frasca is influential about death. I asked him if Klout knows something he doesn’t.
So, while I still don’t recommend you use Klout to determine who the influencers are that you should be targeting, I do suggest you check out how they’re using the four gaming dynamics to pull you in.
There are some good lessons in there you can apply to your own PR and/or marketing programs.
Klout CEO, Joe Fernandez, says "People put Klout score on their resume."
QUESTION: Why would you hire someone who spends all day keeping their Klout score up?
ANSWER: You don't. You hire someone to get your work done!
A high Klout score could hurt your chances of finding a job.
Definitely check out Propz (http://propz.me). This is a fun tool for recognizing those you feel deserve it by giving them Propz. It works across Twitter and Facebook, and you can even give propz to people that aren't active on the social web. I have been using it to propz my friends as well as those I don't know personally, for instance the author of great content I find on the web or my favorite athletes. It is fun to use, works great, and incorporates all the game dynamics mentioned in this blog.
justindorfman87 Cool! I'll definitely check it out.
The unspoken digital elephant in this conversation is the assumption that there can be an influence tracker that cannot be gamed or is not just some marketing ploy.
justinstoned I've blogged about that before so I wanted this to be solely on the gaming dynamics. But you're right, it is easy to game the system. No pun intended.
Personally I find you far MORE influential than Jay Leno. Or even David Letterman.
Rieva HAHAHA! And better looking, too!
Someone should start Lout.com
I think it's very important to know who the most influential bad boys are.
The L+ Topics would be off the hook!
KyleAkerman I had something I wanted to tell you. What was it? Something about engineering. Shoot. I can't remember!
Ok Bones, you don't like videos? You must mean watching them because you never met a camera you didn't like...........ha, ha.......just pullin' your leg.
And see, I knew I wasn't a total anchor; I think I did a post about Army and drugs and you know how that whole guilt by association thing works. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth......just sayin'.....
Good stuff and of course Klout is the only score I know because it's on HootSuite and you are telling me it's totally worthless? That's ok, I was hanging around the Mendoza line anyway if you catch the baseball reference.
Well, once again I brought absolutely nothing of value to your serious post but I just couldn't drive by w/out saying hello. Hope your day has been well.
bdorman264 I don't like to watch videos. But I love to make 'em! So you are who I have to blame for the drugs and army. Jeez, Bill. Can't you do anything right?
What does Hootsuite tell you about my Klout score?
ginidietrich One hundred seventy two or something; this is the one where the bigger number is good, right? Oh, what does it tell me? It tells me you must be somebody..................just sayin'...........
bdorman264 I think the lower the number, the better.
I just don't think anyone but Marketers and people in the Ad Industry care. As I mentioned on the guest post 96% of US consumers are not on twitter today. So even if Klout figured it out don't they need people on Twitter? Or do they feel getting a percentage of the 6 to 10 million US consumers using twitter today to participate good enough?
Don't get me wrong. I would love 1 million customers. But that doesn't win the VC/IPO game. You need 50 million or 100 million. And it isn't there. I myself don't care about any of this stuff. I will never Like, +1, or +K. And I bet most consumers won't either because they are not in our Marketing Bubble where influence has some weird awe. They have lots of true influence at their finger tips. If I want to know about a car would I go to Klout or to Car and Driver website? I mean ever? no. Food will I ask ginidietrich or Food and Wine?
Now I get the PR vision of reaching to people who write and have influence but can't you do the same thing? You have a client wanting influencers for cars will you go to a blogger or try to go to Car and Driver? Logic is the issue here. But marketing is never logical. Sigh,
And Klout is funny. Just as I announced my goal to drop below 50 this month from a high of 62 in February my score is creeping up. I am telling you its being manipulated by hand. What if tomorrow everyone said 'I don't care about influence'. A bunch of companies close don't they?
ginidietrich I tried going to you for food but you never respond! LOL Or should I say Crowd Sourcing on Twitter is even more a failure than Facebook's Open Graph! Which is almost impossible to achieve!
HowieSPM ginidietrich I'd have to disagree with you on the future of social influence. Right now, it may be the case that no one cares about influence, but it's basic human nature to respond to and trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than media reviews, printed references, etc. I may go to the Car & Driver website to get info on a car too, but ultimately, if 4 or 5 people I know (even just as acquaintances) tell me the new Chrysler is garbage, I could care less what the review says.
As for Twitter, I think the current number is at 13% of the U.S. online community. With conversion rates on clickthroughs that much higher than Facebook, I think Twitter is a great site to focus on influence.
My thoughts on Klout... Death is mysteriously no longer one of my influence points. Odd. It was for weeks, and I didn't remove it. There have also been 3 or 4 other extremely strange coincidences that I've experienced after publicly commenting about my Klout.
rjfrasca ginidietrich I did a study where I counted how many tweets were in my stream each day divided by the number of people I folled. It averaged 4 per account. So if I come to twitter tweet once do you call that an active user? I do not. But using 4 per account divided by the 100million to 120mil tweets per day on average I get 25m-30m+ world wide of which 60-70% are international users. The US has 250mil people over the age of 13. So I figure 8m-12m active US tweeters. Now that might really be 25mil in the US with 3% tweeting heavy and the rest tweeting once but I did the math. I never ever believe any of the numbers coming from Mashable or the networks other than hard data (like number of tweets is hard data. but facebook saying 600mil log in each month is a fluff number to look impressive).
In fact I was at a party yesterday with 25 adults and I was the only tweeter and over half had smart phones. = 4% LOL
rjfrasca ginidietrich But RJ I do agree with your influence points but I think 99% of influence today comes live either on the phone, visually in person vs online. That will change but I am not sure how much.
HowieSPM ginidietrich Just come to me Howie, I'll tell you which car to buy between the Bentley and the Ferrari.
HowieSPM You'd better ask me about food or wine! I talk back. Food and Wine does not. And, really, this post isn't about how much disdain I have for the influence tools. It's about how +K is integrating gaming dynamics, which are very, very clever and ridiculously cool.
ginidietrich HowieSPM So clever. No matter how anyone feels about Klout, nobody can deny the fact that they have an insane amount of traction for the time they've been around. They consistently generate interest and opinionated views (positive or negative). To me, that in itself is an amazing success. The gaming dynamics just further bolster their offering in a simple to use, and well timed fashion.
P.S. I will tweet this comment, so as to deter my klout score from dropping for inactivity on twitter during the time taken to type this comment ;)
Love it Gini :) Great article. Who's that good looking guy eating the hamburger at the end there. Is that the Grim Tweeter?
rjfrasca do you recommend an urn or a coffin? And if an Urn does Brass or Pewter last longer?
HowieSPM Coffee Can... À la Big Lebowski ;)
HowieSPM rjfrasca I think you have to take into consideration the acidity in the ground or in the case of New Orleans the moisture..........just sayin'...........
rjfrasca It IS the Grim Tweeter!
Hey Gini,
Thanks for the post! I'm the Marketing Manager here at Klout and just wanted to jump in and say hi. Glad to hear a lot of what you're saying about +K! We're excited about how people have been reacting to it.
In terms of Klout topics -- we acknolwedge they are not perfect and we are constantly working to make them better. You can actually remove any topics you don't think fit your social presence from your profile (look for an "x" when you mouseover) and we use that information to continually improve our system. Thanks again and feel free to reach out if you have more q's!
-Megan
meganberry
Marketing Manager, Klout
meganberry Hey Megan! Thanks for stopping by. I definitely removed those two topics because my crazy friends (cough, Spin Sucks community, cough) would definitely give me +K for them if not. I am pretty impressed with the gaming dynamics you have integrated. It definitely makes me want to login every day.
I don't get the messages that "your influence about XYZ will remain for 3 days" [when you mouse over the little yellow bar]. What happens then??
gizmodesign I guess if you want it to remain, you have to keep tweeting about it?
Hmm, I learned that I am influential regarding Gini and how to pronounce her name. Be nice to me or I shall wield my Klout and all shall call you Virginia Gertrude Dietrich the third. And wouldn't that be Muellerific.
TheJackB Oh kmueller62 ! You've been summoned.
ginidietrich Damn, sometimes I just can't help myself. ;)kmueller62
TheJackB ginidietrich kmueller62 I'm not sure what I'm influential in. I just got offered a Klout perk related to some TV show and I read the whole thing and still wasn't sure what the perk was. But not a show I was even remotely interested in!
KenMueller I have accepted several of their perks and been happy with them. I am not convinced that their measurements are accurate, but I am not sure if you can ever use machines to truly measure things like nuance.
But I don't think that any of this is going away. Companies will continue to try to measure influence and those with the most credibility/best salespeople will find a way to generate revenue/funding.
ginidietrich kmueller62
TheJackB KenMueller ginidietrich kmueller62 I am very influential about Bonzai Trees for some reason. cc DannyBrown
HowieSPM You do know DannyBrown is going to hit you?
TheJackB KenMueller Have you ever blogged about or tweeted about your perks? I wonder if it really helps the companies?
HowieSPM TheJackB KenMueller ginidietrich kmueller62 DannyBrown Two for one?
KenMueller I got that, too. I said, "WTF?" and deleted it.
ginidietrich TheJackB I haven't, and they should be thankful. I've only been offered crap and if I blogged about it, that's what I would say.
ginidietrich I have always disclosed any perks that I have received. I don't dedicate entire blog posts to those perks nor have I attempted to track responses. So I don't know if has helped or hurt the companies, but I am transparent about it. KenMueller
ginidietrich Nope, he is going to "like" this comment providing all of us with more points. That's us gaming the Livefyre system. HowieSPM DannyBrown
ginidietrich DannyBrown well if Danny can Bring It! like Griddy can then I need to run
TheJackB KenMueller I never even mention the perks I get. Except right now: I got a $100 credit to Lot18, which I loved. And I got a Kobe Bryant poster that I sent to my little brother. #thatisall
ginidietrich It's sad I got the same perk but being in PA Lot18 is a dead end for me. :(
I think this +K is crap. I personally don't like Kloit, while I have an account I'm not fond of their way to "identify" people. +K doesn't seem like gaming but rather an easy, crowdsourced ploy to build data without the work or effort on the Klout dev team. Maybe I'm the only one that sees that but its pretty easy to see that having your friends determine what you are "influential" on makes it easier for Klout to target and identify "influencer" in relevant fields. Now a food blogger won't get pitched or come up in searches for toys.It's a semi-smart way to do it. But I still don't see the gaming aspect. There is no return value like point leader boards or badges and even if there were it would be dead and played out. I think in order to really gauge someones Klout online would be to monitor blogs and blog commenting. A wordpress, CMS authenticator that allowed Klout to see/read how many comments you receive/post and how many posts you publish shows how active you are online, more so than who RTs you.
I spelled Klout wrong in my second sentence. Man... I'm doing great.
pbj Klout/Kloit. I knew what you meant. I agree with you on the value of Klout - I don't like it as a tool for measuring influence. But I do like what they're doing with gaming (even without badges). I think a lot of companies would benefit from watching them and others (LinkedIn, for instance) to understand this next wave in social media.
Hi Gini,
Ah, Klout. I have never been a fan of Klout. People have tried to show me the error of my ways, and for a brief time I thought I really must be crazy because I just dd not see the value. I tried watching my score for awhile and it sat there like a lump, telling me I was influential about kitties and blogs (not that I minded). Then I went to log in a couple of weeks ago and it said I needed to create another account, and that was it for me.
Then I started seeing the +K.
You do a great job here of summarizing the pros and cons. I just can't help but feel like this +K thing is emphasizing everything that is driving me batty about social media these days. Do you need points to know that you are helping people improve their business acumen or their blogging skills? Do we need to announce to the world that our friends thing we're worth 5 points a day on a website that has very little to do with any business I know of?
Maybe I'm just not the desired demographic, but even with the pros that you mention, the cons seem to carry more weight with me.
Thanks for outlining it all for me :)
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