Influence

How do you measure somebody's influence on Twitter? Some people measure it by glancing at the number of followers any given tweeter has. Others may go deeper, asking for statistics on link-clicking: what percent of your followers actually click on the links that you post?

But lately, more and more people have been turning to a new tool for measuring influence: Klout.com. This website allows you to enter a Twitter handle to determine someone's Klout Score - a score ranging between 1 and 100 that is based on three key factors: True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

Klout defines these parameters in the following way:

The size of the sphere is calculated by measuring True Reach (engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts, etc.). Amplification Probability is the likelihood that messages will generate retweets or spark a conversation. If the user's engaged followers are highly influential, they'll have a high Network Score. (details)

Thus, Klout is able to get beyond the superficial measurements and provide a much deeper look at people's influence on the web, using over 25 measurement variables.

It's worth playing around with it and looking at the results it provides when you enter your own Twitter handle, and that of other users. For example, when you enter @barackobama, it immediately tells you that he has "celebrity" status with a KScore of 90 points. It also shows that he does more creating than sharing of content, and that this content tends to be fairly broad, rather than focused.

Compare this to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (@sengillibrand). She has significantly fewer followers than Barack Obama (a little over 4000), but nevertheless earns a score of 40, which means she is still in the "celebrity" bracket because of the influence of her tweets. The "Achievements" section shows how many lists she is on, how many total retweets, as well as unique tweeters have retweeted her, and her message reach (which is over 50 thousand).

Enter the handle of a less influential tweeter, and you see how the score decreases and how the parameters change.

These scores may be used in many settings. Naturally, they can be used by employers to evaluate the true influence of potential social media hires. However, they can also be used in PR practice to determine which tweeters can be reached out to, in order to spread the message as widely as possible. As Klout demonstrates, more followers does not always mean more influence.