Klout tracks those with clout

May 8, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Social-media marketers eye the influential

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO

Charles Dastodd is not a veteran of Twitter.

In fact, he signed up for the service just a couple of months ago to promote his photography, which provides an escape from his doctoral work in humanities at the University of Chicago.

But within that time, Dastodd’s connections with other photographers on Twitter have yielded unexpected fruit. He started getting requests for event and portrait photography in Chicago, as well as messages from photographers seeking advice on starting a business or improving their portfolios.

He now has nearly 3,000 Twitter followers, or people who have signed up to read his updates, and follows about 3,200 people.

That caught the attention of Klout, a San Francisco-based, 3-year-old startup that measures social-media influence. Dastodd was asked to attend an event at the Museum of Contemporary Art for Chicagoans with high Klout scores. Dastodd, according to a recent analysis by the company, ranked fourth on a list of 13.

“I started getting all these requests once I built up this large Twitter following,” said Dastodd, who also maintains a Facebook page and an account on photo-sharing site Flickr. “I don’t know if people are first finding me through Twitter or somewhere else, but my sense is people see I do have this large Twitter following, and it gives me a little bit of credibility in some way.”

For Klout and other players in the emerging area of social-media marketing, Dastodd represents the power of Web-based platforms to transform everyday people into influencers.

Driven by the belief that a recommendation from a friend or trusted peer carries more weight than an impersonal advertisement, brands are eager to find consumers who can motivate others in their online spheres to take action or try a new product.

This realm of social-media marketing is potentially lucrative for companies seeking fresh ways to reach potential customers who are spending more of their lives online. ForeSee Results, a customer-satisfaction research firm that has collected nearly 300,000 consumer surveys on more than 180 websites, said 18 percent of people who visit sites say social media influenced them to do so.

The challenge for brands is identifying these “influencers” among the millions of people who are active on social media every day and building relationships with them.

Klout believes its proprietary algorithm, which incorporates data from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, offers the most effective way to measure social-media influence.

Joe Fernandez, co-founder and chief executive of Klout, said about 2,000 companies, including marquee consumer brands such as Starbucks and Nike, have signed up with his company to tap into its growing data pool. In Las Vegas, for example, some hotels have integrated Klout scores with their reservation systems and might offer an upgrade to customers identified as being influential.

“For the first time, people are really broadcasters in a very scalable way,” Fernandez said. “There’s going to be a lot of interest in measuring that. We now all have an audience, which has a size and demographics. ... The people who trust me the most, I can tell them my opinion on anything from my phone instantly. Brands have caught onto that.”

Klout has raised $10 million in funding from investors such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Greycroft Partners. The company faces a number of competitors, such as Twitalyzer and SocMetrics, all of them seeking the best formula for assigning value to a person’s online social currency.

Some marketing experts caution against using online activity as a proxy for the full breadth of a person’s influence. Matt Ridings, the founder of MSR Consulting, said the problem lies not with the scoring systems, but how marketers use them.

Fernandez said his company is constantly refining the Klout algorithm and wants to have 20 social media platforms feeding into the system by year-end.