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Comment by mantrax3 | Hacker News Reader

> "But in our universe, people saw the algorithm as hackneyed, particularly when Justin Bieber had a higher Klout score than the US president."

Maybe Klout was wrong with this particular arrangement, or maybe your assumptions about who has more influence are wrong. Ever thought about that?

After all, "entertainment clout" can be very quickly capitalized as "political clout", as Mr. Terminator has demonstrated.

When it comes to selling products, whose endorsement will sell more products: Justin Bieber or the US President?

Remember Klout's score is used to give "perks" to influencers, the purpose of which is that they show those perks to their fans, therefore influencing them.

While I don't care about Klout at all, I have to say I'd rather bet on Justin Bieber than the US President for that specific purpose.

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I respectfully disagree with your argument because that's not the one I'm making.

I think the general consensus from Klout detractors is that a single "score" cannot encompass someone's influence. Some people are more influential in certain circles than others.

Of course, there is a broad-based influence score you can apply to people, in the same manner that Super Bowl ads are expensive because they reach a broad-based group of US TV viewers. If Justin Bieber reaches that group better than President Obama, than his higher Klout score is accurate.

But under that assumption, his Klout score (and many other Klout scores) are meaningless because we don't think of ourselves in that context. This is why, for example, HackerNews karma points are not fungible to Reddit's /r/AdviceAnimals karma points.

Yes scores can't possibly be universal. But admit it. It just irks you to see a pop singer might be more popular than the president.

To the question below: No, it does not irk me.

> a single "score" cannot encompass someone's influence

I would argue the opposite. There is one ultimate "score" of a person's influence: their wealth.

While not all of a person's influence is delimited in dollars at any given time, almost every kind of influence is fungible to dollars. You can, for example, "spend" social capital by burning bridges asking friends for personal monetary loans.

It's actually pretty unclear to me whether President Obama's or Justin Bieber's influence would liquidate into a greater amount of money. But it's certainly a question that has a factual answer, and it's a useful answer, unlike a Klout score.

Any system which one party creates for a set of players will effectively be gamed by a more willing and able actor.

> Given all our activity (direct or indirect) that is being captured on social networks and general internet activity, there was some inherent value (which we'll call a "clout score") in just knowing who was the "most popular" on these networks.

This as I understand it, is your argument on why Klout should exist. To paint an even simpler picture, this effectively determining a signal-noise ratio for people. Unfortunately, this is flawed, because I believe that we as human beings cannot even determine our own signals. Ultimately we have to rely on 3rd party actors to do it for us (call them Mavens, pundits, curators, or what have you). More of my own thoughts on this: http://www.techdisruptive.com/2012/09/18/we-are-far-from-sol...

Not my argument. If theoretical Klout existed, it'd take into account all signals (social, search, semantic analysis, weights based on expertise, etc.) to determine the "best" at something--a super pagerank for people search if you will. This should negate individual bias.

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