Klout: for better or worse

Imagine yourself in junior high.  Got the braces?  Don't forget the ugly clothing that you thought was cool. Now pretend that your least favorite teacher asked forced you to run for class president and everyday posted the results so the entire school could see it.  That's what Klout is.

A proper description of Klout would be to call it an online social influence tracker.  The service connects to various networks (with your permission) and through its algorithm calculates how influential you are.  Currently the networks are Linked In, Twitter and Facebook, though Klout claims that they are adding more in the future.

The idea of measuring social influence was bound to happen at some point but is it a path we want to go down?  Currently users choose to sign up for Klout and connect their accounts, however once in they can then see the Klout score of all the people they follow and all of their Facebook friends.  It is not hard to imagine a world where Klout score turns into a high school popularity contest where people compete for a higher number.

This is a problem.

Klout score can only be raised by interacting with one's networks.  It would be easy to game the algorithm by spamming your friends and your family with pointless content and becoming what amounts to a comment or reply troll (depending on the social media platform).  My anger lies in the fact that I feel like Klout could really decay the quality of current social networks.  Who wants to wake up with 50 posts from friends on their Facebook wall asking them to comment on whatever nonsense they type?  Not I.

If used for good Klout can be a positive thing, a way for people to measure and reflect upon their own self-worth in the online world.  For now it's too early to tell what will come of Klout, but if it continues to gain popularity we all will be forced to be subjected to its judgmental algorithms.

(Disclaimer): I am a Klout user with a score of 40.

For more information visit Klout.

South Park got marketing right

Last night while enjoying a refreshing post-work beer I decided to go on my computer and watch a little South Park.  I'm a huge fan of the show and have seen almost every episode, so I hit the random button, kicked my shoes off and started to enjoy.

 

The episode was entitled Cartmanland, for those of you who don't know who Cartman is I suggest you step into twenty first century.  Cartman, an unpleasant racist, sexist and generally every "ist" in the book inherits a large sum of money and decides he wants to open his own theme park.  He does so, kicks everyone out and for a while enjoys the park by himself.  After a brief period of time he learns that there are various costs that are associated with owning a theme park and decides to let a small number of people in to offset said costs.  Over time the cost of ownership of this park grow and as does his need to make revenue, so he must let more people in.  The populace, not being allowed to enter the park, line up outside daily in a desire to be apart of that small crowd that is let in.  Eventually Cartman, to his dissatisfaction, has an incredibly profitable theme park.

 

The whole point of that story is point out what seems to be happening with a number of businesses.  Take Google Plus for example, they started off with a limited number of invites and soon the web was abuzz with Google Plus.  Some even say that it could be the fastest growing social network to date.

 

Spotify is doing this right now with their American beta.  Recruiting Klout users to send out exclusive invites.

 

Is this really how it works?  Has South Park correctly parodied human behavior?

 

Apparently all it takes is making something of unknown value seem exclusive and people will be all over it like hot cakes (or Google Plus for an example relevant in our days).

 

Oh ya... and to be fair I was an early adopter and continuing advocate of Google Plus.

 

I guess we're all sheep.

 

Bahhh.

Spotify

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Spinsucks.com,  and today they did a post about the new music service, Spotify.  I thought, "you know I have time, and I'm in on the Spotify American Beta, so why not me too".  Here is the link to their post: Spinsucks: Spotify.

Being a member of klout you get free early access to Spotify.  I've been playing with it and enjoying it so far.  It is kind of like GrooveShark, streaming music for free as long as you're connected to the Internet.  But aside from being 100% legal, I can't really discern a different between Spotify and GrooveShark aside from Spotify being a downloadable app and GrooveShark being a webapp (definitions used loosely).  Sure the legality issue may make a difference to the RIAA and musicians, but to me and most other Internet users we do not really care as long as we get our music.

Spotify has a share feature that allows you to post your favorite songs to Facebook or Twitter.  It also allows your Facebook or Spotify friends to view playlist or favorite artists (assuming you grant your friends permission to do so).  It looks pretty clean and the buffer speed is fast to say the least, of course living in a major city with already fast Internet speeds buffering times have never been an issue.

Currently I am a Rhapsody subscriber (ya I'm one of those suckers).  I pay $10 a month to take my music on the go.  When you spend half as much time commuting as I do, it makes sense to have lots of music and not buy each song individually.  That being said, I just cancelled my Rhapsody account in favor of a switch to Spotify once my subscription runs out.

Spotify promises lightening fast sync times, and it's simplistic UI make it easy to manage music, create, and edit playlists.  Not to mention if the excitement around Spotify holds it could become an invaluable tool for sharing music.

I'm making the switch.  I'll say more once I upgrade at the beginning of next month.