Klout Is Dead: Will Anyone Care?

For about 15 minutes, building a strong Klout score was a big deal. The service looked into all your social media feeds, assuming you gave it access, and then worked out how influential you were. It was acquired for a ludicrous $200M four years ago by Lithium Technologies but the service will be shutting down on 25 May 2018.

Klout used a relative score system to determine how influential you were. The arbitrarily gave people like Justin Bieber and Barack Obama a maximum score of 100. Everyone else was scored relative to that. Back when it was established in 2008, social media influence was still a new thing and people were clamouring to reach the magical million follower mark and trying to prove their tweets were better than anyone else’s. But things have changed and there are different metrics applied to influencer measurement.

Then there’s the whole thing about giving a service access to a lot of personal information over social media. I don’t it’s a coincidence that Klout is disappearing on the same day the European Union’s General Data Protection Order (GDPR) comes into effect. Although Lithium Technologies’ post about the close down makes no mention of the GDPR. They say the move is about using the serivce’s AI and machine learning capability.

To all of our fans: after careful consideration we have decided to shut down the Klout website & the Klout Score. This will happen on May 25, 2018. It has been a pleasure serving you, and thank you for your ongoing support over the years. Details here: https://t.co/xCNdYachxF

— Klout (@klout) May 10, 2018

I went and checked my old Klout account today and shut it down. If you want to do that (as you should for any service you no longer use) log in, click on Settings and then choose Privacy. Choose ‘opt out’ and follow the prompts.

So, see you later clout. You were fun for about 15 minutes but your moment has passed. I doubt anyone will miss you.