I am a little suspicious about changes to Klout's assessment of influence. Maybe I just think like a strategist/politician, and it may even be a little cynical/conspiracy theorist… but…

Let's say you are a Social Network. Not naming names, let's call it Doodle.

Let's say, there is a cool (albeit not terribly transparent or predictable) measure of social media influence that everyone in the industry monitors. Yes, any clever person uses a number of metrics, and there are plenty of tools that measure varying degrees of social media 'success'… but yours seems to be the one that people watch more than others.

Let's say your Doodle is a new player, with the weight of a global corporation behind it. With very clever strategists, excellent UI, and a loyal following/early adopter uptake, but is struggling to carve it's niche in a highly competitive market for hearts, minds, and advertising eyes.

It would be in your Doodle's interests to make sure that everyone who considers said influence tool, feels that, despite their reservations about your Doodle, are not fully on board.

What do you do?

You lobby.

You take them out to lunch. You woo. You, as the strategist, want to make uptake of your Doodle unavoidable in order to maintain said influence on that network.

Let's also say that you have a business social network. Let's say that there are people on there who have direct access to a lot of C-Levels within Corporations. It would be in your interest to have influence weighted based on the "level" of contacts as well as the number.

Now, I am not going to go so far as to accuse anyone of uneven weighting or collusions… but I have observed a marked disparity, across networks, and across locations in how Klout measure "influence".

It could be as simple as opening it up and being transparent, and trying to emulate real world networks rather than just volume, replies, and shares.

But, it's not a giant leap to think that there may be lots of "wooing" going on behind the scenes either, in the social media platform wars, to use Klout as a means of deciding where to post your content for maximum effect… possibly at the exclusion of other massive, popular networks.

Anyone in our game who would ask for advice on how to get greater penetration in the social media game… would advise them to take Klout out to lunch. Or possibly even do deals that, effectively weight the "influence" algorithms in favour of your network.

Thoughts? #wp