In case you are wondering, I am neither trying to be original by intentionally misspelling the word ‘cloud’, nor am I unintentionally demonstrating an episode of, albeit temporary, retardation.
Rather, I am merely referring to a concept which I have only recently been familiarised with and the deleterious effect that it has had on the judgement of both individuals and companies alike.
I was listening to a podcast interview with a senior recruiter from a FTSE 100 company the other day when, half way through, he said that it was now commonplace for companies to look at someone’s KLOUT prior to recruiting them.
- He said it was an ‘established practice’ now.
- He said that it was quite useful.
- He said that everyone who used the internet knew how to maintain and improve their score.
- He said that, until recently, Justin Bieber had a higher KLOUT score than Barack Obama.
Until that very moment, I thought that I was quite up- to- date with most useful ‘established practices’ and, as a person who uses the internet, was quite aware of any possible scores that Justin Bieber had achieved throughout his distinguished career (that was a JOKE, ok!?)
Yet, I had absolutely NO idea what he was talking about.
Well, now I do.
Put simply, your KLOUT score represents the degree of your ‘online influence’ (a bit nebulous, no…?)
Apparently, the score is calculated by analysing the number of entries that you have published on online mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, etc. as well as the quantity (and, quite possibly, quality) of the comments and ‘likes’ generated by those.
The score is also affected by the amount of ‘friends’ (that’s right, folks- yet another platform for ‘befriending’ people…) that have selected you as someone who has ‘influenced’ them.
What KLOUT effectively does is attach itself, as an application, to your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc accounts and draws out all of the ‘relevant’ information from those pools of data.
Obviously, the more mediums you allow it to connect to, the higher your ‘influence’ or ‘score’ would be.
My very first thought on the above was that KLOUT was yet another factory for the continuous accumulation of Big Data; that is to say, it generated its revenue through collecting data on individuals and passing that data onto various retailers, corporations and, quite alarmingly, governmental bodies.
Leaving that aside, however, it is equally perturbing that KLOUT scores are being increasingly used in the recruitment process.
I know for a fact, for instance, that UK
Another possible use for KLOUT is to establish whether your business partners, etc. are business- savvy.
As an example, an FTSE 100 company might not want to instruct a solicitor who has a KLOUT score of less than 70 (out of 100) as such a score might denote that he is not up- to- date with online mediums and cannot, thus, speak in ‘modern business terms’.
Don’t get me wrong; I am not trying to be a proponent of the idea.
I am merely pointing out that the KLOUT score is quite real and it might soon bark AND bite.
The above might all sound quite ridiculous and rather farfetched to you but I can assure you that KLOUT is ‘coming to a store near you!’
And, unless you want to be stuck in the pile of discounted goods, you’d best look up yours and see where you stand.
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