My last blogpost (http://alittleclass.blogspot.com/2011/06/facebook-dominates-just-about.html) was about Facebook is dominating online sharing. This naturally leads to a discussion about how people place a premium on information shared by trusted sources, like our friends, as opposed to aggregated content from other sites. So does this social sharing have a direct relation to how influential individual users can be amongst their friends. There should be a direct measurement available to see individuals reach in their social networks. For example, average click through or views of their shared content.
Klout is a very interesting company that is betting on the importance of people's influence. They intend to measure and quantify users influence by creating an "influence score" for their ability "to drive action." Klout not only measures actions on twitter, but also Facebook and now LinkedIn.
I'm skeptical about the value of this score. I think in curated websites or blogs about products or music, the influence score is a valuable metric for the success of the blogger. In Facebook and other social networks, I have et to see a successful implementation of a driving force for purchases or economically relevant decisions besides clicking on news articles or watching a youtube video. While these two actions have associated advertising revenue, it will be interesting to see the commercial applications of Klout's Influence Score.
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