Wired's article goes into the history of Klout and how it came about (Joe and his three-month speaking diaengagement), Kred's own story is borne out of their tool for social media analytics and monitoring and PeerIndex was borne out of an initial desire to find the best topic curator using crowdsourcing to provide the most interesting content being published at the time.
But the real question is: what are these companies doing? What is the big deal about "influence marketing"? Why do I get a score of 47 at Peerindex, 54 at Klout and 721(!!!) at Kred?
What We Measure is One Thing, What Our Clients Want Can Be Another
One of my favorite discussions in the past 15 months often consists of either an agency marketing person, or a brand director or other publication entrepreneurs working to understand what can "influence marketing" do for them? In a previous post, I describe what I believe to be the rebranding of word-of-mouth marketing to influence marketing. The difference is that in the new era of social networks, APIs for "exhaust data" and Big Data systems to process all of this data into actionable information brings about a new belief that we can "measure" word-of-mouth. I would argue, like Nathan Gilliat did, that there is no such thing as a "unit of influence". All of us - Klout, PeerIndex and Kred - are building models that become our own "truth" for determining actions.
And yes, these are models - not specifically measurement on influence if that was possible. We use models to extrapolate what is happening - and all models have biases that are built around hypotheses. As Nathan says:
Models reflect the opinion of the modeler and the objectives they support. Because apparently simple concepts might be used for different purposes by different specialists, we end up with diverse models using the same labels. In essence, we talk about the labels, because they represent familiar ideas (influence, et al), but the models represent what we really care about (such as positive word of mouth, leads, and sales).
If you understand that the label is just a convenient shorthand for a model that takes too many words to describe in conversation, it's not a problem. If the model generates useful information, it's doing its job. Just don't assume that any one usage of the label is the correct usage. Modeling requires judgment, interpretation, and prioritization in context, which are incompatible with standardization.
So, if you understand that the models are our shorthand for creating meaning out of measurement, the real question is, what are our clients looking for? And to be clear, by clients usually mean the ones who pay for our services.
Agencies and Brands are suffering. They are awash in data and dashboards and monitoring and listening and so on - trying to get a grip on this world we call social media marketing. Years ago, when I spoke on politics and social media , the ideas of "social media" was scoffed at. Today, it will be the "biggest" area of growth in all businesses. Shades of the Cluetrain Manifesto, anyone?
So, when the clients are asking for help, what are they doing? The same thing they have been asking for years on end - how do I get the message out to the right people to move the needle on my goal? The problem is - what do you need to measure to be able to determine return-on-investment (ROI)? And that is where the problem and the puzzle exists.