Product Management Color Analysis: Klout (part 2)

Increased credibility = faster adoption

In my last post I introduced what I like about Klout and the obvious potential that I believe it has. You can check out the first part of the Klout product management color analysis here, but the gist of it was that the Klout model seems to, in my opinion, require that the power social media participants be targeted with functionality in the interest of incenting them to accelerate their adoption of the service. Success in doing so naturally evolves the credibility of the Klout score which in turn would create a sort of dependency upon the rating. Advancing the status of the Klout score would then impact the broader community across the social web thereby making a much more fertile ground for Klout associated perks that are earned by participants and delivered by the companies that covet their eye’s and dollars. The question, then, is how can Klout increase functionality in order to accelerate adoption?

Here are the first 4 of 8 major areas that might help accelerate adoption of Klout by power users.

Transparently Credible: One of the first comments I received on my first Klout post was very short and to the point, “it is easily gamed”. The sentiment that it is easy for a person to manipulate their Klout score is not atypical from the very power users that Klout should be targeting. In order to eliminate this objection Klout would serve themselves well by focusing on making their scoring process as transparent as possible. I realize that this could be tantamount to Google providing the source code for their ranking algorithms, but something must be done for Klout to own the very nature of the Klout score. It can be as simple as disclosing the nuance of what factors are considered when calculating the score, identifying elements of social engagement that have a greater impact than others, and, perhaps most importantly, defend the methods that are used to calculate the score.

Today this is accomplished by disclosing the three elements to the Klout score, true reach, amplification, and the individual’s network. But the definition is vague and doesn’t not offer up tangible examples of the way the Klout score monitors one’s social media credibility. Offering up details to the individual that allows them to see what the Klout score calculator sees immediately erases the mystique over how the score is influenced while adding credibility to the results.

K+ ubiquity: K+ is the action of confirming that someone you follow has influence over a particular topic. Once credibility is established it can be more significant than a Facebook like, and a twitter retweet, and has potential to be more relevant than a LinkedIn recommendation.

That is the benefit. The functionality must make this benefit attainable. Simply put, today the K+ is difficult to use. First I need to find the people that I want to offer K+ to, and Klout just does not make that simple. I do not have the ability to mine my Twitter or Facebook lists, search capability is nearly nonexistent and I cannot use a topic or keyword to find people in my networks that have shared or participated in that context. A key priority for Klout should be driving towards making K+ as ubiquitous as Facebook’s like. I should see a K+ button just about anywhere that I consume content. Because such ubiquity takes time to establish Klout can begin by allowing me better capability to mine my networks to identify those who I wish to offer K+ to. And lastly allow me to determine the topic that the newly K+’d influence and simplify and standardize the ‘I just gave K+ to’ tweets or status updates. I want to add some color of my own when I announce who I just offered my one of 5 daily K+ shout outs.

Topic Management and Monitoring Klout seems to get my topics wrong. Example: I can’t figure out how Klout thinks that I’m influential over ‘charties.’ This is a problem and speaks again to the credibility of the Klout score. The logic used to identify what I influence should do three things. First it should offer me some control over what I wish to influence. Secondly it should crawl my shared content and offer me performance analysis against those self identified terms of influence. Finally it should offer to me insight over the topic that Klout believes I’m influencing with description of why it has come to that conclusion.

Influencer intelligence: Klout offers a matrix to help identify the type of style that social participants posses. It ranges from ‘participating and sharing’, to ‘focused and consistent’. One’s placement along this matrix gives them a style. Mine is ‘specialist’. This is all very promising for two reasons. First I want to see what and how I’m being perceived, but more importantly I want to gain intelligence over those that have influence over me. Similar to the topic discussion above, I think I know best the people in my network that have an impact on my thoughts. I want to gain intelligence over those people and see where they fall on the matrix, the type of collaboration they engage in and the topics that they influence (both the self identified topics and Klout identified topics). This intelligence ought not to stop there, offer up categories of others that are similar in nature to my influence but are also closer in relations to me by way of reach, this adds the benefit of helping me expand my network. I want to be connected with likeminded professionals whose work could inspire my own, and who’s friendship would be mutually rewarding.

The take away? Increase the Klout score credibility and make it easier for me to interact and control the topics of influence I seek. Successful deployment of such capability would almost certainly result in accelerated adoption.

Update: I just discovered the Klout blog and it is a great resource.  Highlights some ways that one can achieve what we’ve outlined here.  Takeaway?  Product management isn’t always about developing the new functionality, it could be about making what is already available more prevalent and easier to use.

photo credit:Aslak Raanes