Saturday, December 3, 2011

Dear Klout With My Deepest Regrets and "MY" Solid Social Media Following to Protect ...

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Dear Klout,

With My Deepest Regrets and "MY" Solid Social Media Following to Protect ...

I felt it extremely necessary to Close my Klout Account today. 

I was ok with my score being adjusted for the sake of transparency when my Klout score took a 15 point dive when your company implemented the changes in October.

I looked forward to a more accurate social media tool.  I continued to support Klout  through the newly implemented way of accessing one's Klout, through usage, giving +K's along with allowing Klout to assign me a score that other people viewed as my Social Media Valuation.  

The more I used my Social Media Accounts the "less value" I seemed to be attaining. 
Mid November there was a week that I was not very active as I usually am.  
My Klout score jumped 2 points
.   Does this make sense for the sole “purpose” of Social Media which is 
“To Engage”?

I have watched very closely all these weeks since "The changes" took place.

Today was the last straw for me.  When I signed into Klout this morning I was greeted with my score taking another tumble.  I would not mind the tumble if I felt like I truly earned the tumble.  I am an avid Social Media User.  I Tweet and Retweet quite regularly.  I have observed that Retweeting affects my score negatively.  I love to Retweet my friends and have made this a regular practice especially on #FF.  

I know that the Klout score does not represent me accurately and therefore maintaining an account and further endorsing a company (with +K ing) that does not represent me and my brand transparently is not in the best interest of me or the people I have endorsed Klout  to all this time.

Also…. since Klout’s  plans include user’s scores being used in so many business and social settings/transactions I definitely do not want my Identity to be scored in the way it has been most recently.

I do not want my name to be represented with a score that I feel does not represent me for truly who I am on Social Media or in any other arena.

I wish your company the best and hope one day I can work with you again when and if your measurements truly align with who a user really is in Social Media..

In closing It took me some poking and asking around to find out how to completely close my account.  

 Thank you my Social Media friends  for the link that enables one to close a Klout  account.-->   http://klout.com/corp/privacy

Warmest Regards,

Kathleen Decosmo

7 comments:

  1. I never understood how Klout created their ranking. It always struck me as very subjective and not very meaningful. I know some people who were very excited about their Klout scores. That said, when you measure something, the metrics need to be meaningful. Too often people measure the wrong things. For example, if you are trying to drive revenue from your website, page views would not the correct metric to monitor, conversions would be the correct metric.

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  2. Thanks for stopping by and for weighing in Monique :)

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  3. I deleted my account this morning as well. I have had it. Just like you, when I am not really engaging, the score jumps. When I am it varies. I get plenty of retweets and @ on twitter and normally at least 20 comments or so on my FB posts. Not sure how they are measuring, but hey, now I don't care. LOL

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  4. I find social media markers of success to be so very random. I know people on Twitter with 40,000 followers and others with 400 followers. Both have been kind enough to retweet posts I've written...people with 400 loyal followers send me far more traffic than those with 40,000.

    It just goes to show that influence isn't solely about the numbers.

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  5. DEAR KATHLEEN, you truly really completely totally ROCK, and I love you!

    (I'm glad and happy for you if you successfully closed your Klout account - but very pessimistic about it. I'll now check you, and even +K you. You know, everybody has klout. :(

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  6. Hey Kathleen,

    my name is Joe Fernandez and I am the ceo here at Klout. Sorry to hear that you have decided to close your account. We are working hard on score accuracy and transparency.

    Here is our status report of what happened yesterday - http://support.klout.com/customer/portal/articles/262929-12-3-facebook-score-issue

    This has been fixed and we have put checks in place to prevent this from happening again.

    Thanks,
    Joe

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  7. I find myself wondering what closing your Klout account really does...I suppose that it may cause them not to score you. Whether or not NOT having a Klout score is a really good thing or not....seems debatable to me.

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