Your Klout Score Means Nothing to Me, and It Should Mean Nothing to You

Lately, I have seen a very disturbing trend in the blogotweeter-sphere. It involves the influence and authority service ranking service, Klout.

A lot of people are becoming pretty receptive to the idea of "scoring" your worth on social sites on Twitter/Facebook. Some sites like Empire Avenue have hopped on this train as well, determining your social worth with a stock price. My thoughts on Empire Avenue have been less than stellar, due to the buying and selling nature of the service. Klout is now growing in popularity, and with that comes more and more people paying attention to their Klout scores, and sharing them.

While I frown upon sharing your Klout score (low or high), and kind of think it is a... immature move, it's your score and it's your to share. But what I do take problem with is attaching someone elses score to content you distribute, as seen below:

What is this Klout score suppose to signify to me in this case? That Gary Vee is more worthy of having his content read because he has a high Klout score?

I don't know, and what concerns me is that people are going to use the Klout score as a metric for whether content is worth their time. 

Example, my Klout score is 53. Will people start getting so focused on Klout scores that they will only view people's content with a 60+ score, even if my content could possibly be more interesting, and better for them?

In short, will Klout be used as a personal filter? Good lord, I hope not.

To me, this is a slippery slope. And using a Klout score to determine someone's worth to you is as useless as determining who to follow on Twitter based on the number of followers they have. Sometimes, the number shouldn't mean that much, and places like Klout only emphasize this.

There is a reason why Facebook doesn't shout out how many posts you've made in a week, or how many people you are friends with on your profile. It's based on connections, and a persons value to you emotionally. Not a physical number. When people see a physical number broadcasted, they feel the need to rank the people around them. That's not the point of being social.

I don't like the direction of the authoritative web, and I will be the first to call people out on it. This has got to stop people, and while Thomas Power, a great guy I enjoy following, is called out in this post, he's not the only one doing this.

We are people, not numbers.