What Happened To Klout.com?
Klout.com was a website and app that rated its users’ social media influence using digital analytics. Using the service, businesses could identify social media accounts with high Klout. They would then offer the owners of such accounts free products, hoping that they would post positive messages about the products.
If there is one thing that Klout did not run a shortage of, it was controversy. For instance, John Scalzi, a Hugo award winner, dismissed the service noting “what Klout exists to do is create status anxiety.”
If Scalzi did not like the idea behind Klout, Lithium Technologies, a social customer service company, had a different idea. It paid $200 million for Klout. However, if you wanted to see how influential you are today, using Klout, you will discover that it is no longer available.
We took some time to look into Klout’s 10-year run. Then, we tried to find out what happened to it.
The History of Klout.com
Klout was a San Francisco-based corporation founded in 2008 by Joe Fernandez and Binh Tran (Source). In a 2009 archived page of the website, Klout.com indicates that it measured “influence across the social web.” The same page adds, “We believe that every individual who creates content online has influence. Our goal is to measure that influence and make it even more effective” (Source).
Klout collected data about the content on the page to rate an individual's influence and their opinion's impact. The rating was influenced by "how people interact with that content and the size and composition of [the individual’s] network" (Source).
Although some people viewed the analysis produced by Klout as some form of a vanity metric, it was being taken seriously by employers. For instance, if you were looking for a job as a product manager, you may have prepared for all the standard product manager interview questions but still not get the job because you did not have enough Klout.
Calculating the Score
According to an article published by Wired.com, a website that hosts several technology blogs, everyone who had a social media account that was open to the public had a Klout score, whether they were aware of it or not. The same publication notes that there was a time when the score had become so crucial that even if you had no idea what your Klout score was, “there's a chance that [it was] already affecting your life" (Source).
But how was the score calculated? Klout tried to be transparent in this area by releasing a research paper, entitled Klout Score: Measuring Influence across Multiple Social Networks.
In the research paper, the service says that the score was calculated "by hierarchically combining communities and networks.” It continues, “We validate the correctness of the score by showing that users with higher scores can spread information more effectively in a network. Finally, we use several comparisons to other ranking systems to show that highly influential and recognizable users across different domains have high Klout scores” (Source).
The Klout Perks Program
In 2010, Klout announced the Klout Perks Program. This was a program that offered the product management expert an opportunity to identify influential individuals who could give promotional products or services. The idea was to influence individuals with high Klout to post positive messages about the company.
Businesses seem to have taken the program seriously. For instance, General Motors offered influential individuals who were willing to post about the experience on social media some Klout perks. In 2011, Chevrolet paid Klout to find social influencers that the General Motors could loan its recently launched 2012 Sonic for three days. For an individual to qualify, they needed to have a Klout Score of 35 and above (Source).
By 2013, the Perks Programs had received more than one million claims across over 400 campaigns. Celebrating this milestone, Joe Fernandez, the then CEO of Klout, is quoted saying, “I feel like Santa Claus with a million people getting Perks” (Source).
The Microsoft Strategic Investment
In 2012, Microsoft announced that it was making a strategic investment in Klout. Some reports indicated that this was a win-win partnership in that it supplied Klout with search data while bringing “influence scoring technology to Bing.”
Writing for the technology website, TechCrunch, Eric Eldon notes that the investment by Microsoft was another attempt by the technology giant to present itself as an "open search platform." Eldon goes on to note: "As with the Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and even Google+ integrations, Klout helps position Microsoft as the more open and socially-attuned alternative to Google's still-dominant search product" (Source).
The Controversy
While some took Klout with a degree of seriousness, Andrew Hutchinson, writing for a Social media website says, that its detractors saw it as “a vanity metric - and like all vanity metrics, it can be gamed, it can be cheated, and thus it's rendered largely useless” (Source).
In a humorous quip, Scalzi, in his column on CNN Money, points out that Klout was practically sucking in data from all social media platforms and “throwing it into an algorithmic pot.” Klout would then pull out a number between 1 and 100, and stick it on an individual as their influence score. “Klout was a little bit socially evil,” Scalzi wrote.
Writing for the NewYorker.com, Nicholas Thompson doesn’t mince how words and runs his article with the headline Klout is Evil, But It Can Be Served. Thompson doesn't dispute the fact that the idea is clever. Still, he adds, "clever ideas are not necessarily good ones, and Klout is designed in a way that makes it likely to fuel both unhealthy obsession and unhappy competition." His idea is that Klout encourages people to Tweet out of obligation. He says, "Klout seems to encourage nothing good" because it seems to feed into the habits of narcissists.
Klout Acquired by Lithium Technologies
In March 2014, Lithium Technologies confirmed earlier reports that it had acquired Klout for around $200 million. Lithium provided tools for businesses to build online communities. It ceased to exist as a separate entity after it merged with Spredfast (a firm in social media marketing, community management, and software), creating Khoros LLC.
What Then Happened to Klout.com?
In 2018, Peter Hess, the then CEO of Khoros, sent out a message indicating that Klout had finally lost its Klout: "I'm writing to let you know that Lithium has made the decision to sunset the Klout service, effective May 25, 2018." Hess does not seem to make any effort to explain the decision.
How Professionals and Product Managers Used Klout
Klout wasn’t just a vanity metric—it had practical applications for professionals looking to track influence, build credibility, and make data-driven decisions. From product managers to marketers and recruiters, Klout scores were once referenced in hiring, networking, and marketing campaigns.
How Klout Was Used by Professionals
- Recruiters & Hiring Managers – Some companies considered Klout scores in hiring decisions, particularly for roles in marketing, PR, and social media management. A high score signaled strong online engagement and industry influence.
- Marketers & PR Professionals – Brands leveraged Klout to identify influencers for partnerships, making it easier to find people with strong reach and engagement in their niche.
- Product Managers & Growth Teams – Product teams, especially in tech and SaaS, monitored Klout scores to measure user advocacy, gauge sentiment, and track the impact of social media campaigns.
- Sales & Business Development – Some professionals used Klout scores as a quick way to assess the social influence of potential leads or contacts, particularly in B2B networking and thought leadership spaces.
What Are the Best Klout Alternatives?
Since Klout’s shutdown, professionals have turned to other tools that offer similar—or even more specialized—features for measuring social influence, tracking content performance, and identifying key influencers.
| Tool | What It Does | Why It's a Klout Alternative |
|---|---|---|
| BuzzSumo | Content and influencer tracking tool for competitive analysis. | Helps brands identify top-performing content and influencers based on real engagement data. |
| Brandwatch | Social listening and sentiment analysis platform. | Gives companies insights into social trends, sentiment, and influence metrics across industries. |
| Hootsuite Insights | Social media monitoring and analytics tool. | Tracks engagement, brand mentions, and influencer impact over time. |
| SparkToro | Audience research and influence analysis tool. | Helps brands find where their audience engages online and which influencers drive conversations. |
| Empire.Kred | Gamified social influence tool. | Focuses on interactive missions and influence tracking, similar to Klout’s scoring but with more engagement features. |
Klout vs. BuzzSumo: Who’s Tracking Social Influence Now?
At its core, Klout aimed to quantify social influence, ranking users based on their online activity and engagement. BuzzSumo, while not a direct replacement, takes this concept a step further by offering a broader, data-driven approach to content and social media analysis.
- Tracking Online Impact – Klout focused on assigning a single influence score to users based on their social activity. BuzzSumo, in contrast, provides a comprehensive look at engagement metrics, showing which content performs best across platforms.
- Competitive Analysis – One of BuzzSumo’s biggest strengths is its ability to let users compare their content performance with competitors. This feature provides insights that go beyond a personal influence score, making it a valuable tool for brands and digital marketers looking to refine their content strategy.
- Content Discovery & Trends – Klout helped users understand their influence, but BuzzSumo helps brands identify trending topics and high-performing content, offering real-time data on what resonates with audiences.
In short, while Klout measured influence, BuzzSumo helps users leverage it by providing a full picture of social and content trends in the current digital landscape.
Empire.Kred: Gamifying Social Influence
Another unique alternative is Empire.Kred, a platform that blends gamification with social influence growth. Instead of simply scoring users like Klout, Empire.Kred allows them to complete missions and earn influence through interactive challenges.
- Engagement-Based Growth – Users can complete missions (such as sharing content, engaging with others, or participating in campaigns) to build their social presence over time.
- Data Tracking – Unlike BuzzSumo, which focuses on content performance, Empire.Kred gives users a personalized growth dashboard, tracking their influence in a game-like progression system.
- Comparing Influence Over Time – The platform offers historical data on how users are performing against themselves and others, creating a competitive but interactive experience.
While BuzzSumo is an analytics powerhouse for content marketers, Empire.Kred caters to users looking for a more hands-on, gamified approach to increasing their social media impact.
What’s Next for Social Influence Tracking?
While no single tool directly replicates Klout’s one-score-fits-all ranking system, modern alternatives provide richer insights, competitive analysis, and real-time social tracking. Today’s professionals use a mix of social listening, content analytics, and influencer identification tools to gauge online influence—showing that while Klout may be gone, the demand for measuring digital impact is stronger than ever.
Beyond just tracking social influence, businesses today also rely on Voice of Customer (VoC) analytics tools to gain deeper insights into customer sentiment, feedback, and engagement trends. If you're looking for tools that help you understand audience perception and brand influence, check out our Best Voice of Customer Analytics Tools list to find solutions that go beyond social metrics and into customer-driven decision-making.
