RIP Klout: The thing you didn’t know was still a thing
Klout, the service that claimed to summarize every Twitter user’s social reach and expertise into a tidy score, is shutting down on May 25th. In addition to its individual ratings, the company offered business analytics solutions and even partnered with Microsoft before it was acquired in 2014 by Lithium Technologies. Today, the latter’s CEO Pete Hess tersely explained in a public post that Klout was shuttered because it is “not aligned with our long-term strategy.”
To all of our fans: after careful consideration we have decided to shut down the Klout website & the Klout Score. This will happen on May 25, 2018. It has been a pleasure serving you, and thank you for your ongoing support over the years. Details here: https://t.co/xCNdYachxF
— Klout (@klout) May 10, 2018
And yet, the internet moves on — in fact, it had already, awhile ago. Assigning an ur-score to your internet value seemed nauseating then, but it’s far more pointless now that the social media landscape has settled into its current dystopian oligarchy. And I think we know who’s able to harness those platforms to maximum effect, thank you very much.
Hess did go on to write that among the company’s AI and machine learning prospects, it is “also planning the launch of a new social impact scoring methodology based on Twitter.” We’ll have to see whether this is another coming of Klout. And again we will ask, why.
(13)
