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As a founder of a company in that same space I would like to add some nuance to this blog. Putting it as simple as scoring people and helping you sell back the

As a founder of a company in that same space I would like to add some nuance to this blog. Putting it as simple as scoring people and helping you sell back the data so you can improve your score is to simple. Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. But with pagerank nobody complaint because the value was directly visible in the Google search results and it was just a website not a person that got a score. Know we're in the social age and it's not site's that are the publishers but people. And Klout is not the only one that's doing this, we are doing it, Google's doing with the G+ authorrank and Facebook probably has it as well in their edge rank. The thing with Klout is that it's the only one that puts focusing on the person himself and touching your ego which can upset some people. The applications and possibilities of the data are rarely thought of.

CaptainZapp 13y ago
Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. Well, I for one value the contents shared by someone on the merits of such contents. Why exactly should I trust a service, any service for that matter to make such judgments for me? And if you want to argue that it's the same thing as pagerank; well, that analogy is spurious, at best.
MDCore 13y ago
Google provides a service: finding content on the internet. We want pagerank because it (presumably) returns quality answers to our questions. Klout and companies like it (and presumably yours) don't add any value. I can already find people just fine through Twitter or Facebook search. Klout scrapes my data, applies some formula and then tells everyone it means something and tries to convince people I don't know that this number tells them something about me, while trying to convince me that I should do something about that number so that strangers will think better of me. I already have a job thanks. Klout is not providing a service or adding value. Go away.
- zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
  It's perhaps not providing a service directly to you but it is for loads of other people. And don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Klout here, there are loads of stuff if would do different, and we do. I'm trying to get people look at it from a wider perspective. I don't see people complain about karme score's here on HN, reputation on stackoverflow and loads of other site's while it's basically the same. A score that help people make sense out of the content these people are producing.
  - MDCore 13y ago
    It's not quite the same. Karma/rep on HN, Stackoverflow etc are a core part of the site. Companies like Klout are parasitic. They are doing something with the content I generated and then trying to tell me to do something else "or else" (I'll have a low Klout score). They draw most of their ire because the service is opt-out. Change it to opt-in and only the people who care about Klout will use it and the level of vitriol will go down. Is your service opt-in?
jcbrand 13y ago
I wonder if services like yours won't just perpetuate and strengthen the so-called "superstar" effect. It's a feedback loop where a few people at the top reap all the rewards for being at the top already (and being "recommended" to everyone else). I'm not interested in having Robert Scoble or Michael Arrington recommended to me, I already know about them and am not interested in following them. I'd like to know about much lesser known people who've made very useful technical contributions in their fields (instead of prima donnas). So far, I've found out about these people from mailing lists, github profiles and perhaps hacker news, not ranking algorithms.
- zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
  The superstar effect is true, and even google has trouble coping with that, hence the changes in their algorithms over and over. The "prima donnas" you're talking about are perhaps known to you but a larger majority not. But if you would look in the longtail you would definitely find interesting people.
anigbrowl 13y ago
You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. I am perfectly well able to do this myself, thanks. Most of the ratings that surround online content are useless noise.
- zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
  Like I mentioned above, I'm sure you can, but can you do that for all the +400 million tweets each and everyday?
threedaymonk 13y ago
> Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. [...] You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. This strikes me as some kind of variant of the ad hominem fallacy. You don't need to know anything about the author to value their content. A piece could be anonymous or the author's sole work and still be worth reading; conversely, people with high internet reputations often write garbage. Edit: I meant appeal to authority, not ad hominem. Insufficient coffee error.
- zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
  True, but anonymous posts that get endorsed by the people you know have authority on that subject is a good indication. And of course, you as a person can do this as one of the best. But can humans process a daily 400 million tweets this way?
- jasonlotito 13y ago
  You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something: while sometimes the message is more important than the messenger, many times it's not. Who says something is just as important. If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well. There is a reason people provide context for what they say by sharing their experience. And just like in real life, taking legal advice from IANAL isn't something you should blindly do.
  - threedaymonk 13y ago
    > If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well. That doesn't follow. And, funnily enough, HN does deemphasise the author by showing the name in small grey text. There are plenty of reasons to attribute posts: the conventional expectation that one can be identified as the author of one's work, for one; the tendency of people to be more civil, for another. > You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something Come on, I know I've only been here for nearly four years, but there's no need to be quite so patronising.
    - jasonlotito 13y ago

CaptainZapp 13y ago

Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. Well, I for one value the contents shared by someone on the merits of such contents. Why exactly should I trust a service, any service for that matter to make such judgments for me? And if you want to argue that it's the same thing as pagerank; well, that analogy is spurious, at best.

MDCore 13y ago

Google provides a service: finding content on the internet. We want pagerank because it (presumably) returns quality answers to our questions. Klout and companies like it (and presumably yours) don't add any value. I can already find people just fine through Twitter or Facebook search. Klout scrapes my data, applies some formula and then tells everyone it means something and tries to convince people I don't know that this number tells them something about me, while trying to convince me that I should do something about that number so that strangers will think better of me. I already have a job thanks. Klout is not providing a service or adding value. Go away.

zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
It's perhaps not providing a service directly to you but it is for loads of other people. And don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Klout here, there are loads of stuff if would do different, and we do. I'm trying to get people look at it from a wider perspective. I don't see people complain about karme score's here on HN, reputation on stackoverflow and loads of other site's while it's basically the same. A score that help people make sense out of the content these people are producing.
- MDCore 13y ago
  It's not quite the same. Karma/rep on HN, Stackoverflow etc are a core part of the site. Companies like Klout are parasitic. They are doing something with the content I generated and then trying to tell me to do something else "or else" (I'll have a low Klout score). They draw most of their ire because the service is opt-out. Change it to opt-in and only the people who care about Klout will use it and the level of vitriol will go down. Is your service opt-in?

jcbrand 13y ago

I wonder if services like yours won't just perpetuate and strengthen the so-called "superstar" effect. It's a feedback loop where a few people at the top reap all the rewards for being at the top already (and being "recommended" to everyone else). I'm not interested in having Robert Scoble or Michael Arrington recommended to me, I already know about them and am not interested in following them. I'd like to know about much lesser known people who've made very useful technical contributions in their fields (instead of prima donnas). So far, I've found out about these people from mailing lists, github profiles and perhaps hacker news, not ranking algorithms.

zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
The superstar effect is true, and even google has trouble coping with that, hence the changes in their algorithms over and over. The "prima donnas" you're talking about are perhaps known to you but a larger majority not. But if you would look in the longtail you would definitely find interesting people.

anigbrowl 13y ago

You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. I am perfectly well able to do this myself, thanks. Most of the ratings that surround online content are useless noise.

zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
Like I mentioned above, I'm sure you can, but can you do that for all the +400 million tweets each and everyday?

threedaymonk 13y ago

> Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. [...] You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. This strikes me as some kind of variant of the ad hominem fallacy. You don't need to know anything about the author to value their content. A piece could be anonymous or the author's sole work and still be worth reading; conversely, people with high internet reputations often write garbage. Edit: I meant appeal to authority, not ad hominem. Insufficient coffee error.

zlatanmenkovic 13y ago
True, but anonymous posts that get endorsed by the people you know have authority on that subject is a good indication. And of course, you as a person can do this as one of the best. But can humans process a daily 400 million tweets this way?
jasonlotito 13y ago
You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something: while sometimes the message is more important than the messenger, many times it's not. Who says something is just as important. If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well. There is a reason people provide context for what they say by sharing their experience. And just like in real life, taking legal advice from IANAL isn't something you should blindly do.
- threedaymonk 13y ago
  > If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well. That doesn't follow. And, funnily enough, HN does deemphasise the author by showing the name in small grey text. There are plenty of reasons to attribute posts: the conventional expectation that one can be identified as the author of one's work, for one; the tendency of people to be more civil, for another. > You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something Come on, I know I've only been here for nearly four years, but there's no need to be quite so patronising.
  - jasonlotito 13y ago