I have not checked my Klout score, and indeed until just now had no idea what Klout actually was. When I looked at Klout's homepage, it requires a Twitter account to search for someone. I don't use Twitter and I know I'm not the only one, so I think this is pretty bogus as far as a reputation measurement goes.
I don't know how how this guy has decided that means I'm in an online minority, but I do know that his Bartonphink score just took a dip.
The point I think you are missing is that Klout, and other ranking systems, can give a quick and objective assessment of someone's value or ability in a certain area.
Here's a list of ranking systems and what they indicate:
Klout -> online influence StackOverflow -> programming expertise FourSquare -> loyalty to a business Credit Score -> fiscal responsibility HackerNews Karma -> ability to provide interesting and pertinent points of conversation
My "online influence" has zero effect on my professional or personal life, and I suspect the same is true for many other software engineers. That's the point I was making, and the author's first erroneous sentence is roughly where I stopped reading what he had to say.
If I'm hiring an engineer, a project manager, or a designer, I care about their ability to do the job, not about how much they influence their twitter followers.
- Any problem that they don't know how to solve can be solicited to x number of people. - If they encounter a bug in 3rd party software that your company uses and publicly bitch about it, the better chance you have to get a timely fix. - If your company uses/creates open source software, it is more visibile, and there is a greater likelihood that more people will contribute to it. - They market your company. - They attract more desirable hires.
Would much rather live in a Klout + Quora world than a Klout + Twitter world.
