404 Klout not found.

OOPS! You must have mistaken me for someone who actually has influence.

I can assure you that I have none. I couldn't talk my way out of a brown paper bag! But don't take my word for it. And don't feel obliged in any way to share this. Or this.

Thanks for the inspiration Jon...or did you just influence me? Gah.

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KLOUT 101 - How to be truly influential.

Yes. YOU are one of the most influential people in social media and can start a trend with a single tweet. Wow, you actually have more KLOUT than Justin Bieber!

But guess what? With awesome power comes huge responsibility. Now that you have this amazeballs Klout score of 101, what are you going to do with it?

Duh. Get the t-shirt, put it on* and then go out into the real world and smile. That is how you will influence real people.

And hug them. Your life will be better.

*T-shirt isn't actually necessary. But it is fun and cool in a geeky kind of way.

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Klout PERKS.

Klout is back on my radar.

"But JC, I got loads of free stuff from Klout! Free this, free that."

Klout perks are not 'free'. Every time someone talks/tweets/posts about their perks they are advertising for Klout the company and its clients. It's my personal view that Klout perpetuates an unhealthy type of advertising/marketing practice which allows the media to prey on human unconscious inferiority complex. This practice regularly tears down the public's self esteem, makes us feel, fat, ugly and poor and generally unworthy so that we will spend money to try to alleviate a perceived void. Klout exploits this human foible in their business model and harnesses whatever influence you have to make a buck.

BTW you're awesome no matter what your score is. Here's a HUG.

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My KLOUToris.

WARNING: You have been warned.

My Klout score has been going down on me (<--see what I did there?) since yesterday's Klout Fall. Turns out I'm not all that influential... but the good news is that there is one person in my life I am able to influence and he's giggling over my shoulder as I write this.

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About KLOUT.

So I'm on Twitter and I often see tweets with the word "KLOUT" in them. It's always "KLOUT this", and "KLOUT that", and "I'm so worried such-and-such will affect my KLOUT score" and stuff. And I'm like, what is this KLOUT thing everyone is talking about?!?

Now when I want answers* to my questions, I ask my Twitter following. And if it's social media related, I hashtag #UsGuys. All you need to know about #UsGuys right now is that they are remarkable and they like male strippers and, uh... cake.
*not necessarily the right answers, but that's what makes it fun.

So my tweet went something like this:

A very helpful #UsGuys tweep named @barrypeters suggested I go look at @SeanMcGinnis' vlog post about The Problem With Klout. So off I go, tarum tarum tarum. I watch the video, I read the post and I learn that people who check their KLOUT 'score' always change the way they behave online afterwards. They go from being genuine, to being oh-so-influential. Which then supposedly somehow renders the KLOUT score meaningless.

Do I now know what the heck KLOUT is?

No! I do not!

Being essentially curious, I just go to the dang KLOUT site and sign in... You're curious too, huh? You want to click on it to find out how you score don't you? Haha.

I see this:

I'm like, what? My "score" is 66 and they say that's "high"? Hmmmm. 66 is not high people, 100 is high. Am I wrong? Okay 66 out of what? It doesn't say and I'm too impatient to dig.

Then I read this:

What? I'm a thought leader? Cool!

But then, my eyes fall on this:

So apparently I'm really influential on the subjects of Cinderella, Hello Kitty and Renee Zellweger. Three things about which I'm fairly certain I've never discussed anything online or IRL ever. Well ok maybe I did say something about Hello Kitty one time on Facebook. But still.

What does it mean???

I dunno. All I care about is that it made me laugh out loud to draw this:

Oh yeah, I did notice that these two buttons are all over the KLOUT website.

Gee. Any idea what that's all about...?

UPDATE! June 6, 2011:
Since posting this, my Klout score went up to 69. Which is a very auspicious number, I'm sure you'll agree. Was I doing anything different in my online behaviour?

You can make someone else smile by sharing.

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