Are you stuck on measuring your influence?
I attended (and moderated) an aimWest event this past week. I'm writing a future post about the event topic: the Filter Bubble. It was an awesome event! More on that to come, but this post is on Klout. Klout.com was discussed a little at the monthly aimWest - but more importantly "Have you quit Klout yet?" was the theme of that discourse. Klout is a site that presumes to measure your social media influence. You wind in your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and WordPress IDs for tracking. Those of you that only use Posterous, you're out of luck. Klout only measures from WordPress and Blogger. Also, none of you on Android cells with other social picture sharing apps can increase your Klout - only we iPhone users that have Instagram get the bump. Nice, huh?
So why would you want to quit? Why wouldn't you? is the better question. I know, I know, we humans want to measure and score everything. We like competition. But does Klout really do that for you? For one thing Klout keeps changing their algorithm, stating that the changes will make things more even - more realistic. 
After the last change, however, Klout's CEO feared (publicly) that he may have made a mistake. I think monetizing people's clout in Social Media was the first mistake, personally. But seriously, did your Klout "score" actually make you want to better engage your audience? Did it change you? Did you tweet more? Did you use Facebook better? Did you actually influence more people?
I believe true influence is noticed on and off line. A friend coined the term "Meat Space" (or at least started using it) a while back. It means to meet in 3-dimensional space - actually pressing the flesh. Touching the meat of someone by shaking their hand, patting them on the back, and interacting in person. To me, you influence someone by receiving a reaction or at least an action. You can see their reaction in person. You can tell you've influenced someone if they take action - like signing that contract. Klout doesn't measure your offline influence.
I did partake in the Klout.com phenomena for a while. But I never really understood why I should care? Other than measuring myself against others - in that same competitive way that everyone else liked about it - why use it? If any of you can give me a valid reason, I'd possibly consider joining Klout again. Until then, I'm going to use Google Analytics and link shortners to track hits and clicks to my blog, site and other websites. I am going to measure my clout by getting new customers or perhaps new members to aimWest. I quit Klout. If you want to quit too but can no longer find the opt out, do this:
Klout disconnected the link between "profile settings" and "delete your account". The removed function is now pushed to the very end of the "privacy" policy page which you can only access through a text link at the bottom of your "profile settings" page.
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