1057: "Klout"

[Primis]

Alt Text: Though please do confirm that it's actually *me* on Klout first, and not one of my friends trying to get me punched. The great thing about this douchebag deadman switch is that I will never dare trigger it.

Klout can't be that bad, maybe if I just go see myself to defend it- OH GOD

[rhomboidal]

I'm pretty sure my Klout score is a negative imaginary number.

[joee]

I gave up when I found out Justin Bieber is the only one with a perfect Klout score.

Spoiler:

hi glasnt

[Black Dynamite]

What is klout?

[solarion]

Who is John Klout?

This actually loosely ties in to some thoughts I had regarding socialism yesterday. If you take it as given that people will try and get into positions above other people (which is why corruption comes into ideologies where property is meant to be shared) then you might be able to patch this to some extent by making positions more virtual and less dependent on physical objects. Think of Reddit karma for instance, and the shit people do to get points that mean so little. You'd still have lots of corruption and unfairness; but it might impact basic human needs a bit less?

Of course you'd need to totally revamp society for this so it's little more than a rather silly hypothetical.

[Ardee]

"I always hear 'punch me in the face' when you're speaking, but it's usually subtext..."

Anyone?

[peri_renna]

I think the plan may have a flaw - to wit: can you still get into trouble for punching someone if they don't press charges?

[Isaac]

... If you take it as given that people will try and get into positions above other people...

I don't know if that is a give-in..... I suppose it is a give-in that /some people/ will seek control over others, but I think the most effective solution to that problem is to not accept that control.

(which is why corruption comes into ideologies where property is meant to be shared)

..... I think that corruption has shown itself to be quite rampant in systems where property is not meant to be shared, I think that the source of this problem is going to be found more in allowing some people to control others and in a lack of competition and not in rather or not sharing is expected or encouraged.....

... then you might be able to patch this to some extent by making positions more virtual and less dependent on physical objects.

I don't think I am quite following you here, but if the position is made more virtual and less physical, doesn't that also reduce the utility of the position?



[edited for clarity]

[wjwhichello]

Reminded me of Doctorow's "Whuffie" (in the two seconds I bothered to research Klout).

[ryan7113]

I use Klout only to compete with my Spanish teacher.

[jpk]

I just looked at their home page. Since I use neither twitcher nor facebook, I suppose I have no klout score at all.

Oddly, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything at all because of this.

[CLAVDIVS]

Is there a way I can find out what they know about me without logging in or registering? And how the hell do I opt out of this nightmare?

[Jack21222]

So how long before employers use your Klout score in making hiring decisions?

[JimsMaher]

The irony of Randall saying he will never play Klout, after posting the comic, is that he's increased their recognition and given them free press in doing so.
+1 to armor revoked.

[peri_renna]

So how long before employers use your Klout score in making hiring decisions?

It's already too late. Wired had an article about someone who was rejected because his Klout score was too low in the May issue.

[Quicksilver]

Though please do confirm that it's actually *me* on Klout first,

You said you'd say that.

not one of my friends trying to get me punched.

You told us you'd say that too

The great thing about this douchebag deadman switch is that I will never dare trigger it.

You said you would definitely say that.

[babble]

Seems an OTT reaction to something that looks on the surface to be yet another stupid frivolous facebook app, but maybe there's more to it than that. Benefit of the doubt time, maybe. the perks thing makes it clear it's all about advertising, anyway. Ugly, sure, but no more sinister than facebook itself. What does 'find out what they know about me' mean? it says they look at content people publish, so, presumably, you can look at what you've published on your social networks and that's what they 'know'. And they offer facebook and twitter authorisation. the whole *point* of those APIs is that you aren't sending any data to the application, just granting temporary permissions.

Brr at the drawing, though. The faceless thing does not work in close up at all. It's fine for the normal stuff. Action, etc, it's OK as shorthand. but this - ugh. there's no buffer between the reader and the realisation that this artist chooses a blank ovoid to represent character, emotion, everything about himself. In closeup like this it's just creepy. Still, the ones with 'hair' are much worse, so we the audience were spared that this time at least. I know, I know, choice made years ago > signature 'style' > consistency requires taking it to this extreme- but then, as my dear friend the imaginary editor would say, don't do the closeups. Many xkcds are blocks of text putting forth personal opinions, or pictures of web pages. anything would be better than this.

it's odd how proud people are of not using social networks. truth is there's nothing wrong with using them and there's nothing wrong with not using them. There's benefits and pitfalls to both. believing that either path makes a person superior is what's irritating.

lol @ peri_renna

[jpk]

So how long before employers use your Klout score in making hiring decisions?

It's already too late. Wired had an article about someone who was rejected because his Klout score was too low in the May issue.

What, someone was actively looking for a person who spends his whole day crafting twats and updating his myspacebook page? Thanks, unless I'm hiring you as celebrity-in-residence I'd rather your score was down as close to zero as you could get it. If I needed Stephen Fry on staff (god help us) I'd be talking to Stephen Fry. If I were releasing a product that was so weak I needed an "evangelist" to push it, I'd be out hiring some twerp who other twerps flock to.
But if I were thinking about investing in a company and I found they weren't firing people for letting their Klod score get up too high, I'd assume they were paying people to play on the interwebs all day, instead of making a product to make me money. Fuck a bunch of that shit!

[baf]

It's actually a pretty appropriate request, when you consider the word's other meaning.

[Lukeonia1]

And how the hell do I opt out of this nightmare?

As far as I can tell, you can't. There's an Opt-Out Page, but the Facebook opt-out dealie returns a 502 Bad Gateway error, and the "Submit" link on the Twitter opt-out form goes nowhere, does nothing.

Is anyone else having this rather glaring problem?

[907Code-G]

Spoiler:

Though please do confirm that it's actually *me* on Klout first,

You said you'd say that.

not one of my friends trying to get me punched.

You told us you'd say that too

The great thing about this douchebag deadman switch is that I will never dare trigger it.

You said you would definitely say that.

Excellent!
And seriously, how do you opt out? I logged in just to see what exactly it was, and now, I keep clicking the unlink, and it just refreshes, telepathically signaling me that there's no way out.

Every morning, Klout greets me with a depressing representation of my meaningless existence. It tells me how little I matter, how little people pay attention to me, and then posts it where the people that don't pay attention to me can see how much their ignoring me really matters. I want out of this hellish cycle.

[Eternal Density]

Never heard of it. *shrugs*

[San Fran Sam]

Klout!

It's a dessert topping!

No, it's a floor wax!

Wait, it's both. And nutritious too!

[kleingordon]

Klout kinda seems redundant for academics, since our career advancement prospects have been running on basically a Klout system for decades now.

[ohki]

Isn't this just http://thewhuffiebank.org/ except with the actual social aspect of transferring score to those you feel deserving removed?

[Falos]

If my measurement is anything but a zero I have failed somehow.

I am aware that an irreversible vow is foolish and short-sighted, no matter how certain the cause. Nevertheless I extend the same request, as binding as possible, to whomever it may concern should the situation miraculously arise. I will, however, tolerate a warning. Preferably in the vague form of "Grit your teeth." if you would.

[JJ0]

Pure evil. Just like the rest of its ilk.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/11/evil-social-networks.html

[ziphi]

"I always hear 'punch me in the face' when you're speaking, but it's usually subtext..."

Anyone?

I just registered to get this, Sherlock

[nigenet]

I think the plan may have a flaw - to wit: can you still get into trouble for punching someone if they don't press charges?

IANAL, but possibly affray or public order offence (In UK that is, more specifically England & Wales)

"I always hear 'punch me in the face' when you're speaking, but it's usually subtext..."

Anyone?

Sherlock! Loved that line

[madjo]

And how the hell do I opt out of this nightmare?

As far as I can tell, you can't. There's an Opt-Out Page, but the Facebook opt-out dealie returns a 502 Bad Gateway error, and the "Submit" link on the Twitter opt-out form goes nowhere, does nothing.

Is anyone else having this rather glaring problem?

The twitter link leads me to a twitter authorization page, I need to authorize Klout to have access to my twitter page, before I can opt-out from it. (I think not!)

I hate facebook, so I'm not even going to click on that link.

[The Geoff]

You may need to allow pop-up blockers to opt-out via Twitter. The only data the op-out accesses are your profile and those you follow, both public information anyway. I'd never heard of Klout before this comic, but the first thing I did was opt-out, and I bet a large number of people have, Randall obviously has a lot of influen....oh crap...

[Daimon]

I don't have a Twitter, and I don't have a Facebook. What does Klout do to me?

[Tova]

I could have lived quite happily without having learned about that.

[rubik]

upon reading this comic, i immediately felt biased against klout because i generally respect randall's opinions.
if other xkcd readers share that feeling, then we will inadvertently reveal randall's actual "clout" by refusing to use klout.
yes?

[Kitutal]

"I always hear 'punch me in the face' when you're speaking, but it's usually subtext..."

Anyone?

I just registered to get this, Sherlock

ooh, I'm not the only one that does stuff like that.
really tempted to look at this klout thing now, just to see what it's like, but I'm...
actually, why not, it can't hurt me, can it?

[Badion]

Randall,
I promise I will hold you to this. Though to be fair I have no social network so I may not be able to prove it was you and in fact I may just punch you in the face for even mentioning this thing. Yes, that's my plan.

[*Kat*]

More information and how to opt out: http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/career-w ... lout-score

Yes, you do have to "opt in" in order to "opt out" but removing the app from your facebook and twitter profiles is pretty easy and once that's done, you are fully opted out.

[psu256]

All I can say is that using Klout introduced me to the existence of http://beardhead.com/ They can't be all bad... just mostly.

I signed up for fun after I read that Wired article, just to amuse myself. I managed to get a 38 doing nothing but making sure I tweet about random nonsense about once an hour, which makes no sense whatsoever, since my college buddy Jeff (of wackygamer.tv) actually goes on stage at comedy clubs and has a youtube channel and he's only got a 33.

FYI: I've seen days where GetGlue had a 100 score, but it isn't everyday - It is usually in the 95-97 range.

[pablo.gonzalez.alba]

I still don't get this Klout.
I read somewhere that some airline was going to give special treatment if you had a Klout of over 40, so I checked mine, it's 59. It seemed great, but: I'm nobody!

I can't influence my cats to pee in the litter, how am I supposed to influence other people? I have 150 followers in Twitter and less than 200 friends on Facebook. I don't get a lot of RTs nor anything that would hint that I deserve that score.

Of course I don't care about it. But I'm curious, who does care about that number? (besides that stupid hiring manager form the article)

[ctdonath]

Of the discussions about Klout I've seen, I'm surprised nobody has addressed the purpose of its existence: by pandering to pride, it persuades huge numbers of people to grant private access to ALL their social media. What a fantastic data-mining coup! Google may crawl most of the web, but it can't get behind the IDs and passwords of many millions of users; a simple "give us access and watch your score go up!" model persuades those millions to fling open what they held private against Google et al.