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

CHAPTER 8Controversy and Turmoil

While Klout rocketed ahead on an upward trajectory, its reputation was starting to take a hit from many irate social media users who loathed the idea of being publicly rated and compared.

Quirks in the company’s early programming awarded astronomical influence scores to fake “bot” Twitter accounts, created wild weekly swings in influence scores, and assigned silly and irrelevant influence topics to people. Popular bloggers railed at the real and perceived invasion of privacy and complained that the company was using information gleaned from millions of public accounts—without an option to opt out or manage privacy ...