Klout is not clout

Online tools like Klout and PeerIndex are intended to give social media users an "influence score" between one and 100 for their activity on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even YouTube. However, many social media experts argue that tools like Klout are unable to truly measure social media's biggest influencers because they base their numbers on quantity of followers and shares rather than the true quality of shared messages. According to Keller and Fay in Chapter 3 of The Face-to-Face Book, "it's the quality of each interaction that matters far more than the total quantity of people reached by any influencer" (p. 53).

To understand the controversy behind Klout, Keller and Fay looked at a specific tweet sent by Kenneth Cole in 2011 in the midst of political Arab uprisings : "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online." The tweet caused a major PR crisis for the Kenneth Cole brand, but it also increased Kenneth Cole's Klout score. Thousands responded to Kenneth Cole with disapproving retweets and condemning feedback, but because social audiences were flocking to the Twitter controversy, Klout recognized Kenneth Cole's message as influential and gave the brand a 30-point bump in Klout. 

Cole's Twitter mishap goes to show Klout's 100-point scale does not accurately define social influence, because it does not take into account the credibility of messages shared or depth of the conversation. Measuring influence by numbers of followers and retweets says nothing about the grassroots, word-of-mouth influence users may have outside of their social networks, which is an important part of the equation (quite often the most important part) if you are trying to calculate the true magnitude of an influencer's clout.