I have More Influence than Mike Tyson and Ashton Kutcher! Klout, PeerIndex, PROskore by Trent Partridge

Six months ago a rep at an ad agency told me that she had 2000 Twitter followers and had more influence than one of my friends who had 70,000 followers. The first thing I said is,”Girl, You Crazy.”  But she justified it through a site (now closed) that she got the numbers from.  That is when I started taking a look at some of the players in the Social Influence Measurement game.

Is there really a way to algorithmically generate influence scores?
I don’t know, but 13 years ago I asked the same question about search and look what Google has done.

How have we been measuring who has influence?
Twitter followers? Facebook Likes? Linkedin connections? YouTube views? Come on man! Isn’t it time that  these companies have some sort of REAL measurement? Until then, we have these measurement indexes.  It will not be perfect, and people will be able to game the system. But guess what, you can game the system with SEO even with Panda, Gorilla, Godzilla and Orangutan updates.

Does anyone actually give a damn about a Klout or PeerIndex score?

• I am a top notch Social Media Guru my Klout score is 76. Yours is 20. You suck!
• Obviously we have more influence in the industry than company XYZ. Look at their PeerIndex score at 17 and ours is 82. We clearly have more influence and understand that space better.
• My Klout score is 90. Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?

The Twitter or Facebook challenged and people with low scores say Hell No to scores! But the reality is 100 million people have signed up to get a Klout score. So as Lebron James says 10 times at every interview ‘At the end of the day’ people do care.

Top Players in the Social Influence Measurement Industry

• Klout
• PROskore
• PeerIndex
• XeeMe
• EmpireAvenue
• Flout

Klout – http://www.klout.com/

The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

• True Reach: How many people you influence
• Amplification: How much you influence them
• Network Impact: The influence of your network

Networks Used to Gauge Your influence
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, WordPress, Blogger, Foursquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, LastFm, Flickr

I like Klout’s layout design, its pretty simple and clean.  One of the “sticky” characteristics of Klout is the Perks program, where based on your score you can earn Klout Perks. I got some Blackwing high end pencils by Palomino. Although really I haven’t used a pencil since Nixon was in office. I also received a PERSON OF INTEREST screen wipe, some mini cards from Moo, a $10 Credit at LeftLane Sports and $25 off at BlueFly.com. So far, for what it’s worth I am fine with my Klout sign up. I am not changing my life, writing more blogs or retweeting.  But as Charlie Sheen would say ,‘Winning’ with my perks.

PeerIndex – http://www.peerindex.com

Your overall PeerIndex score is a relative measure of your online authority. The PeerIndex Score reflects the impact of your online activities, and the extent to which you have built up social and reputational capital on the web.

Networks Used to Gauge Your influence
Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress, Blogger, RSS feed

I like Peerindex the home page is pretty straightforward easy to read. They do not harass you every minute about how you need to come back to the site and do things. And they are starting a PeerPerks project so you can get free products like Klout. Now, I am not saying perks influence me to like a site but, if someone is measuring me and I get something out of it then I am ok.

XeeMe – http://www.xeeme.com

I could not find a good an explanation of the XeeMe XeeScore which they mention on their site. But they do have the best analytics and use 202 social networks for their score where everyone else uses less than 10.

Networks Used to Gauge Your influence
202 Supported Networks

EmpireAvenue – http://www.empireavenue.com

If you produce a tweet, post a Facebook item on your wall, upload a photo to Flickr etc., we pay you in Eaves every day. We call these activity earnings. Earnings for each network (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.) are capped.

At EmpireAvenue they want you to be active on your social networks and within EmpireAvenue. This is too much work for my busy schedule. Since I do not engage on their site I have a bad score. But I ain’t mad at them. I do see people very active and enjoying the site.

Networks Used to Gauge Your influence
Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Blogger, RSS, Flicke, FourSquare, Beta Sites – Instagram, WordPress, Google+

PROskore – http://www.proskore.com

PROskore is an online business network that measures professional reputation. We do this by looking at your professional background, social media influence and overall popularity. We then use your score to help YOU generate new business from other members of the PROskore network.

PROscore is the Linkedin of Social Measurement sites. PROskore is designed to help professionals generate business. Their goal is to generate leads for your business and help you connect with others.  For the business minded, you have to go this way.

Networks Used to Gauge Your influence
Twitter, Facebook, Klout, Linkedin, YouTube, Blog, Google

Flout.me – http://flout.me

Your social influence is too important to leave to others.

Sites like Klout try to tell you how important you are. That’s ridiculous! Only you know how important you are. Flout lets you flaunt it to the world.

This is for everyone who really thinks all this social influence measurement is a joke. Go to Flout.me, sign up through Twitter and make up a large score like 800 and then tweet it. Just like you do on Klout when your score has increased. This is clearly just for fun!

Networks Used to Gauge Your influence
Twitter

Measuring influence, reputation and coming up with a score is a tough business. There will be millions of critics who love it and another 2 million who can’t stand it. They key is how will it affect what people do.  Do Klout and Peerindex encourage people to write, retweet , blog and engage in more conversations?  Can these scores be used as a real tool for business?

The bottom line is what effect will it have on you.
What’s your opinion on Klout, PeerIndex, PROskore, EmpireAvenue and Xeeme? We’d love to hear it!

Trent Partridge
https://twitter.com/#!/media55