In fact, soon you’ll be able to get gadgets such as iPhones or flat-screen TVs, or perhaps free access to premium online services.

Wahooly, the service that connects startups and influencers, is announcing an expanded partnership with Klout next week that will connect influencers to later-stage startups … and create an online marketplace of rewards for promoting and helping those startups.

The company originally launched in May of this year with seed funding of $750,000 to help fresh young startups get traction. At that time, Wahooly focused on very early-stage companies, and rewards were focused on virtual stock, or “points,” which could only be redeemed if and when a startup was sold or acquired.

But next week the company is turning the dial to 11.

Wahooly will connect high-influence people who have a Klout score of 60 or higher with later-stage startups –  companies that already have traction — and add a rocket booster to their growth. In addition, the company is creating a rewards marketplace that will give influencers choices about how — and when — they want to be rewarded.

“The whole goal of the program is to demonstrate over the course of 90 days what people with high influence can do,” Wahooly chief executive Dan Severson told me this past week. “We want to take a company that has already built traction and see where we can take them. It’s like a mini accelerator program online.”

Influencers will get points, just as they did initially, but now those points are not just redeemable for cash when a Wahooly-aided company goes public or gets acquired.

“People want liquidity,” Severson said. “They want to be able to sell their points, or redeem them in a reward shop, or spend points on a reward that the startup wants to offer you.”

That could be a tangible reward like a gadget or smartphone, or it could be a premium account on an online service. Which means you don’t have to wait for a “liquidity event” to happen in order to recoup the rewards of helping a young company. If you’ve helped them gain traction, you can theoretically get something back right away.

Inc. Magazine is also in on the partnership and will be giving high Klout scorers a free 12-month subscription to the magazine. Three later-stage startups are currently in the running for launch, but the first partner has not yet been finalized.

It’s an interesting tweak to the original idea, and one that requires less delayed gratification on the part of influencers — and promises those influencers a greater chance of actually getting something for their efforts, since most startups fail. It does, however, increase the likelihood of gaming the system: people developing a high Klout score simply to get or win something.

I asked Severson why Klout is participating in this expanded program.

“Klout wants to prove that people with high influence scores can create impact,” he answered. “Klout gets validation, and the result is also a public case study for Wahooly.”

photo credit: kk+ via photopin cc, Thomas Hawk via photopin cc

Influence-scoring startup Klout today updated its iPhone application to allow members to receive rewards on their phones and add an influence identification card to Apple’s Passbook application.

Klout is the San Francisco-based company that scores a person’s influence from one to 100. The startup’s complex scoring algorithm is put to use by brand and marketer partners to offer people with high scores “perks” such as product freebies and exclusive access to content or programs. To date, Klout has issued 800,000 perks to members through more than 450 partnerships.

Klout for iPhone now comes with perks, previously a web-only experience. The application user can check out offered perks, receive notifications for perks that he or she qualifies for, and claim perks from inside the application.

Also new is Klout integration with Apple Passbook, the digital wallet-like application native to the iOS experience.

Members can choose to add a “Klout Card” to Passbook in the latest version of the app. The card, pictured right, displays a person’s name, photo, and score, and includes a QR code that he or she can use at places providing Klout members with special access or services.

The company also promised to dole out rewards better suited for each member, and enhanced the web experience around perks to make offers easier to claim and share with friends.

Photo credit: SynergyByDesign/Flickr

Microsoft is buying a little influence for its number-two-ranked search engine.

Thursday, the company announced a strategic investment in Klout, and a two-way technical partnership that brings influence-scoring technology to Bing and search data to Klout.

“This is an alliance based on a shared belief that people are at the center of task completion,” Bing corporate vice president Derrick Connell wrote in a blog post. “To help you find the right person we need to determine who is influential and trusted on different topics on the web. Bing and Klout share this vision.”

With the partnership, Bing’s search sidebar, the social additive that includes Facebook, Twitter, and Quora data, has been enhanced with Klout scores to give searchers a better idea of the subject matter expertise of people that Bing suggests in the “People Who Know” box (pictured right).

Klout said that it would be incorporating search data from Bing in its scoring algorithm. The startup will use various search signals to more accurately reflect a person’s real-life influence in his or her overall score. Klout will reward a user (with a linked Wikipedia account) with additional points based on how often they are searched for on Bing, for instance.

Both companies, which have allocated resources to a joint development team, said Thursday’s announcements are just the initial start to making the connection between people, search, and influence.

The companies did not disclose the terms or amount of the investment.

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds/Flickr

Klout believes by infusing an algorithmic understanding of real world prestige that its discovered a more accurate way to score a person’s influence. Today, the social analytics company launches an all-new scoring system alongside a dramatically redesigned site to make its sometimes controversial calculations less ambiguous.

The new Klout dashboard. Click to enlarge.

Klout is the San Francisco-based startup dedicated to the research of reach, the analysis of authority, and the science of status. The company quantifies hundreds of inputs from social networks to assign a person an influence score between one and 100. Klout members with high scores are eligible for special perks from brand sponsors. People with low scores, however, may be passed over by hiring managers.

“This is a natural evolution,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez told VentureBeat of the company’s new scoring methodology. “The landscape is constantly shifting, and we want to challenge ourselves to provide the most current view of what influence means on the social web.”

The startup now factors in 400 different social media signals, which is up from 100 signals previously. Klout also analyzes 12 billion total data points, up from 1 million, on a daily basis.

Most notably, Klout has, for the first time, integrated Wikipedia as a primary data source to get at assessing a person’s offline influence. The company applies a PageRank algorithm against the Wikipedia page graph to calculate the importance of a person’s Wikipedia page. The service also looks at the number of inbound links to a page, and compares the number of inbound links against the number of outbound links.

With the addition of Wikipedia data, Klout is taking its first stab at scoring real-world influence, and its new score aims to provide a more accurate assessment of overall influence.

A person’s Klout score also now reflects a deeper understanding of behaviors and reactions on social properties. The score considers even more data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

The startup is giving more emphasis to a person’s job title, company, and connections on LinkedIn, Fernandez said. On Facebook, it’s drilling deeper into photo-tagging and “liking” actions and looking at signals such as whether the member “liking” a person’s update is a frequent or infrequent liker and drawing inferences from there. But it boils down to this: the larger the measured impact of the status update, the higher likelihood the update will positively influence a person’s score.

Klout moments featured on the profile page

The significance of the reworked score is underscored by an overhaul to the Klout.com experience, rolling out to users on a gradual basis, that includes the addition of a feature called “moments.”

“This is a huge engineering accomplishment for us,” Fernandez said of the new scoring technology, “but a new score is not very exciting unless you can understand what it means. To do that, we’ve completely updated the site.”

The Klout.com dashboard includes a comprehensive look at the impact of the content a user creates and the interactions a user drives on his or her score, as designated by green bars. The dashboard comes with an expandable score summary section for a network-by-network graphic breakdown of activity.

Moments, the primary part of a member’s profile page now, identify and showcase the most influential updates a member has posted in the past 90 days. The moments feature, which will be made available to users on a rolling basis over the next few weeks, calls out the specific status updates having the most impact on a person’s Klout score.

“What we really want to do is show off why somebody is influential,” Fernandez said. “What are the things they are passionate about? What are the things they are experts about? How did they get this score? It just changes the feeling of the site.”

The hope, said Fernandez, is that members no longer feel judged and analyzed but instead feel important and listened to. He likens the profile page to a social media resume that represents the best things a person has ever said on social networks. “It’s a good starting place to learn about somebody.”

With the changes, Klout also finally gives consumers a reason to return to the site on a frequent basis.

“For the normal person on the current version of Klout, there’s not a ton of reason to come back regularly. I have found myself, since we launched this internally, coming in once a day just to check the content I created yesterday, like what the impact was. It’s been really valuable for me to understand what my network responds to.”

Members, however, are sure to have the strongest reaction to their changing scores. The last time Klout fudged with its scoring methodology, influence-obsessed folks used their social networking reach to loudly bemoan the lower scores. The miniature web dustup eventually faded away but demonstrated that plenty of people, despite not fully understanding the nature of their scores, possess an attachment to the metric.

Fernandez admitted that many users will once again notice a change to their scores with the new methodology in place. The difference, he said, is that this time around a majority of users will find their scores have remained relatively the same with just one or two point fluctuations up or down. Some people will see a decent rise, while 10 percent of Klout users many see a meaningful drop in their scores, he said.

President Barack Obama, who has the most important Wikipedia page among all individuals as determined by Klout, got a five-point boost and jumped to a Klout score of 99, for instance. With the update, pop star Justin Bieber lost his status as the only person with a perfect 100 and now has a score of 92. This reporter found her score bumped up by nine points.

The site updates that accompany the score change seem largely designed to appease the parties that want to know the why and the how behind the ongoing changes to their scores.

“What we’re doing is so challenging. We’re analyzing 12 billion pieces of data per day now, and it’s taken us four years to build that system,” Fernandez said. “We’ve made a big step in what we’re providing to consumers. We finally got to where we hoped to get to.”

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds/Flickr

The masses can now travel in first-class style without dropping cash on a first-class airplane ticket, but only if they’re influential.

Influence-scoring startup Klout has partnered with Cathay Pacific Airways to provide members with stellar social-reputation access to the airline’s lounge at San Francisco International Airport, an area normally restricted to first and business class passengers.

Klout is the now heavily-funded San Francisco-based company that hooks into Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites to quantify a person’s online reach and spit out a score between 1 and 100. The startup uses its scoring algorithms to offer rewards, in the form of “perks,” from brand partners.

Starting Wednesday, Klout members with a score of 40 or higher who have the newly released iPhone app installed can show their score to the Cathay Pacific Airways‘ lounge receptionist for access to the VIP area. The perk is available to all sojourners passing through the “A” boarding area at SFO, not just those flying on the airline.

The lounge features ample seating, workstations, a TV room, comfy chairs, shower suites, and complimentary food and beverages. The private area even includes a noodle bar offering made-to-order wonton noodle soup and dan dan mien.

“This is just two weeks after we rolled out the mobile app,” a Klout spokesperson told VentureBeat. “It’s a great example of how the app will help users benefit from having their Klout wherever they go.”

The promotion should offer some healthy social exposure for the airline, which primarily flies to Hong Kong. The perk will likely encourage influentials to check-in, Instagram, and tweet about the airline’s cushy airport amenities.

“By partnering with Klout, we have the opportunity to invite travelers who typically may not fly with us to experience our ground products and services, in hopes that they may one day choose to visit us again,” Cathay Pacific’s VP of marketing Dennis Owen said.

American car maker Chevrolet is once again turning to influence-tracking startup Klout to promote its cars.

Chevrolet is offering Klout members influential in social media, technology, and environmental topics the opportunity to borrow 2012 Volts for three-day joy rides. The campaign represents Klout’s largest national automotive “perk” to date, the companies said.

The perk is being offered in six markets, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Members with a Klout score of 50 or above in one of three subject areas are eligible to sign up.

Klout is the San Francisco-based company that hooks into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social sites to quantify a person’s online reach with a score between 1 and 100. The startup then provides its most authoritative members with rewards in the form of perks, offered up by brands and advertisers looking to gain credibility in social circles. Perks have ranged from free t-shirts and business cards to gratis Windows Phones.

The “Plug In with Chevy Volt” promotion is Chevrolet’s third by way of Klout. The automaker previously loaned out Volts to 20 consumers in the Chicago-area, and later provided 130 people with Sonic loans. Chevrolet has dubbed its prior campaigns a success, and said that it knows of at least one instance where online mentions of its perk led to a new car purchase.

“[Car-related perks] are definitely among the most popular perks we’ve had with Klout, and previous Chevy Perks have done very well,” a Klout spokesperson told VentureBeat. “We had a chance to drive the [Volt] at SXSW and think our users will have a blast testing it out.”

The Chevy Klout perk program will run in Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle from April to June, and Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland from July through September.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Money can’t buy you friends, but in the case of influence tracking startup Klout, money can buy you neighbors and possibly an understanding of the social dynamic linking people in communities.

Klout, a San Francisco-based company that attempts to quantify a social media user’s reach, has used a chunk of its estimated $30 million in new funding to purchase the community-centric company Blockboard for an undisclosed sum.

Blockboard makes an iPhone application designed to connect neighbors through a mobile community bulletin board. The app is currently only available to users in San Francisco neighborhoods.

“We acquired Blockboard to really invest in bringing Klout local and mobile for our users,” a company spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Everyone has influence, whether it’s in tech, or cooking, or in their local neighborhood, and we’ll integrate Blockboard’s technology, expertise and team to help fulfill that vision.”

“If you’ve been following Blockboard (or using it in San Francisco), you know that we’re all about using technology to connect neighbors and build stronger neighborhoods,” Blockboard explained in a blog post on its sale. “Along the way we’ve learned a lot about how local communities work, including the fact that people often rely on influence to build relationships with those around them.”

In short, both companies are suggesting that they can align forces to find the most influential community members in real world environments, but just how exactly Blockboard will be incorporated into the Klout experience remains to be seen.

Here’s our educated guess: Klout will tap Blockboard to understand the relationships between community members and eventually assign scores for offline influence. And should it successfully do so, the startup will mature into an influentially more significant company for advertisers and brands.

So we put the question to Klout directly, and asked whether the startup intends to score offline influence. “We haven’t gone there yet or set any timelines,” the rep said, “but just as Google seeks to understand the world’s information, we seek to understand the world’s influence, so it’s part of our vision for the future.”

Blockboard arrived on the neighborhood scene two years ago. The company previously went by the name BlockChalk and raised $1 million in funding. Kloud declined to share financial details of the acquisition.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk/Flickr

Klout measures online influence by tracking a person’s reach across social sites and analyzing her Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ relationships to spit out a score between 1 and 100.

Klout scores, said CEO Joe Fernandez in a 2011 year-in-review post, are now being used by more than 5,000 partners, up from 1,000 last January, to reward or quantify a social web user’s online standing.

“The Klout score is being used for ways far beyond what you see on Klout.com,” Fernandez told VentureBeat. “This ranges from hotels using the Klout Score to upgrade rooms when you check-in to credit card companies using the score to reward bonus loyalty points … The significance here is that companies are making over 7.5 billion requests a month for consumers Klout scores.”

But the biggest leap came in terms of monthly requests to the startup’s API. Klout was fielding 100 million API calls per month in January. Now, just 11 months later, the company is seeing 7.5 billion calls each month. The figure means that Klout offers the most definitive way to understand the world’s influence — at least in Fernandez’s mind.

Of course, Klout’s 2011 comeuppance wasn’t without a few audible hiccups. The company dramatically altered its scoring algorithm — many users’ scores plummeted by 10 points or more — and experienced the wrath of ego-trackers everywhere. The new scoring methodology also buoyed critics’ ongoing decries that Klout’s metric is meaningless. A profile privacy kerfuffle only added to non-user discontent.

Still, the 7.5 billion API calls per month figure is impressive for an up-and-coming, four year-old startup and proves that its reputation score has met with industry approbation for the most part. But Klout has got a ways to go before it joins the likes of the elite; Twitter, Google and Facebook all field billions of API requests per day.

Image via billhd/Flickr

[Peter Yared is the vice president of apps at Webtrends, which acquired Transpond, a social-apps developer he founded.]

Sentiment analysis is a hot new trend in social media, with the promise of helping brands understand what consumers are thinking and saying about their products. Products including early contender Radian 6, newcomers such as BuzzLogic, and my own company’s Webtrends Social Measurement product are becoming pervasive in marketing organizations. But while consumer sentiment is important, what’s much more important is revenue.

When revenue is down 10%, “but people like us!” is not an acceptable response from the head of marketing. Sentiment analysis isn’t a solution unto itself, but it can be highly useful as a realtime feedback loop for advertising effectiveness and may soon be able to predict advertising results.

In the Mad Men-era heyday of mass marketing, marketing spend was impossible to quantify. TV, magazine, radio and billboard ads were purchased, and it was very difficult if not impossible to track exactly the return on investment of various slices of the marketing spend. Marketers would focus on issues like branding, messages and color schemes, with virtually no feedback loop other than the occasional focus group.

With the advent of digital marketing and online commerce, marketing spend and effectiveness is now tracked at the most minute level. How many ads are clicked on, how they convert, what is working and what is not is tracked at every level and segment. Even traditional legacy advertising is voraciously tracked, from Nielsen tracking how many consumers see a TV spot to QR codes on billboards acting as an effective realworld clickthrough.

In stark contrast to marketing of the past, today’s marketers are measured by how much revenue they bring in per dollar spent. What “sentiment analysis” does is give those marketers an alternative way to measure their effectiveness — tracking how customers feel about and how much they are talking about a brand. All that effort on branding, messages, and color schemes can finally be validated!

However, the number of positive mentions you generate is simply a step towards revenue. If more people are talking about Pepsi than Coke, but more people are buying Coke than Pepsi, there is something seriously wrong in the conversion funnel towards a purchase. To make sure you’re turning positive sentiment into revenue, you need to make sure you’re making proper use of the analysis you do.

For bread and butter products like Wheaties and cable TV, sentiment analysis is more customer service — dealing with customer complaints that occur in social media and routing the complaints to the particular department that can handle it, before the complaints spread. Comcast, a company that many folks love to hate, has been particularly pro-active at responding to customers on Twitter, and even Salesforce is jumping into the game with its Service Force social CRM offering.

For product and company launches and other new offerings, sentiment analysis can help you track in near realtime how a new product or piece of content is spreading and decide what opinions to re-promote to grease the wheels of message spread. Products like Klout and PeerIndex help further by quantifying the viral influence of people tweeting about your product, so you can prioritize retweets of positive mentions and quickly attempt to neutralize negative sentiment.

However, the more important story here goes beyond what people are saying about a single brand or product launch. For the first time in history, we can look back in time and see how word of mouth and opinion about a product spreads, turns negative, or simply vanishes. Tying historical shifts in sentiment to external factors such as ad campaigns will show exactly what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and what can inflect a campaign towards viral success.

Much like Wall Street tests its predictive algorithms by analyzing past stock market trends and the impact of externals factors such as news stories and government reports, companies like Topsy and Infochimps that store tweets and connections between tweets are sitting on a ton of data that can analyze past sentiment in order to predict future sentiment.

In the Mad Men era of marketing, marketers had no idea how their campaigns were doing. Nowadays, marketers can track how campaigns are performing in real time and get an idea of what people are saying about their brand. And soon, by analyzing past sentiment, marketers will be able to predict exactly how a campaign will perform, and in realtime place ad units in to tilt campaigns towards virality and conversion. Knowing that you should buy some Facebook ads targeted at a particular demographic when a multichannel campaign has had a certain amount of success on YouTube is invaluable. After all, there’s no better sentiment than having a customer’s money in your bank account.