As a founder of a company in that same space I would like to add some nuance to this blog. Putting it as simple as scoring people and helping you sell back the data so you can improve your score is to simple.
Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. But with pagerank nobody complaint because the value was directly visible in the Google search results and it was just a website not a person that got a score. Know we're in the social age and it's not site's that are the publishers but people. And Klout is not the only one that's doing this, we are doing it, Google's doing with the G+ authorrank and Facebook probably has it as well in their edge rank.
The thing with Klout is that it's the only one that puts focusing on the person himself and touching your ego which can upset some people.
The applications and possibilities of the data are rarely thought of.
Google provides a service: finding content on the internet. We want pagerank because it (presumably) returns quality answers to our questions.
Klout and companies like it (and presumably yours) don't add any value. I can already find people just fine through Twitter or Facebook search. Klout scrapes my data, applies some formula and then tells everyone it means something and tries to convince people I don't know that this number tells them something about me, while trying to convince me that I should do something about that number so that strangers will think better of me.
I already have a job thanks. Klout is not providing a service or adding value. Go away.
It's perhaps not providing a service directly to you but it is for loads of other people. And don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Klout here, there are loads of stuff if would do different, and we do. I'm trying to get people look at it from a wider perspective.
I don't see people complain about karme score's here on HN, reputation on stackoverflow and loads of other site's while it's basically the same. A score that help people make sense out of the content these people are producing.
It's not quite the same. Karma/rep on HN, Stackoverflow etc are a core part of the site. Companies like Klout are parasitic. They are doing something with the content I generated and then trying to tell me to do something else "or else" (I'll have a low Klout score).
They draw most of their ire because the service is opt-out. Change it to opt-in and only the people who care about Klout will use it and the level of vitriol will go down.
Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone.
Well, I for one value the contents shared by someone on the merits of such contents.
Why exactly should I trust a service, any service for that matter to make such judgments for me?
And if you want to argue that it's the same thing as pagerank; well, that analogy is spurious, at best.
I wonder if services like yours won't just perpetuate and strengthen the so-called "superstar" effect.
It's a feedback loop where a few people at the top reap all the rewards for being at the top already (and being "recommended" to everyone else).
I'm not interested in having Robert Scoble or Michael Arrington recommended to me, I already know about them and am not interested in following them.
I'd like to know about much lesser known people who've made very useful technical contributions in their fields (instead of prima donnas). So far, I've found out about these people from mailing lists, github profiles and perhaps hacker news, not ranking algorithms.
The superstar effect is true, and even google has trouble coping with that, hence the changes in their algorithms over and over.
The "prima donnas" you're talking about are perhaps known to you but a larger majority not. But if you would look in the longtail you would definitely find interesting people.
> Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. [...] You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone.
This strikes me as some kind of variant of the ad hominem fallacy. You don't need to know anything about the author to value their content. A piece could be anonymous or the author's sole work and still be worth reading; conversely, people with high internet reputations often write garbage.
Edit: I meant appeal to authority, not ad hominem. Insufficient coffee error.
> This strikes me as some kind of variant of the ad hominem fallacy. You don't need to know anything about the author to value their content. A piece could be anonymous or the author's sole work and still be worth reading; conversely, people with high internet reputations often write garbage.
Er, while we're citing logical fallacies...isn't your last assertion here an example of confirmation bias? Often, people with "high internet reputations" are heard most often, which means that when what they say is garbage, it will be quite prominent and memorable.
You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something: while sometimes the message is more important than the messenger, many times it's not. Who says something is just as important. If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well.
There is a reason people provide context for what they say by sharing their experience. And just like in real life, taking legal advice from IANAL isn't something you should blindly do.
> If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well.
That doesn't follow. And, funnily enough, HN does deemphasise the author by showing the name in small grey text. There are plenty of reasons to attribute posts: the conventional expectation that one can be identified as the author of one's work, for one; the tendency of people to be more civil, for another.
> You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something
Come on, I know I've only been here for nearly four years, but there's no need to be quite so patronising.
> Come on, I know I've only been here for nearly four years, but there's no need to be quite so patronising.
I wasn't being patronising. I was trying to make a point (though, I'll admit, it wasn't obvious). I admit that attempt was clumsy. Sorry for making you feel like you were being patronized. My intent was 100% honest though.
I was trying to show what could happen if association was removed. If context was removed. If I don't know who you are, how can I quantify your advice. After all, I'm much more inclined to appreciate people's opinions on the state of HN year over year if they've been participating longer than that.
> the conventional expectation that one can be identified as the author of one's work, for one; the tendency of people to be more civil, for another.
And context. Advice is cheap. Everyone can offer advice. And context helps us rate that advice. Just because something sounds good doesn't mean it should be followed, or even listened to.
And it's fairly easy to make a mistake in authoring what you say to the point that people misunderstand you, even if it's not what you meant.
One of the big mistakes startups here in the Netherlands (and the rest of europe)make is that the try to copy the Silicon Valley eco system, which will not work here. For a hole lot of reasons like history, culturel difference, political system etc.
For instance, one mistake a lot of startups make is offering Dutch people shares while their productivity wont be higher. Giving them a higher salary or more freedom on where and when they work motivates them much more and is often enough reason to leave a big boring corp.
It's true that there is less money here then in SV but it doesn't mean there are no jobs. But most of these job postings won't be on a site like the above. I even think the problem here is more on the supply side and not demand. I can name a few startups that are looking for talent right now, including us, willing to pay a great salary but simple can't find the right talent. Take a look at the type of open positions, cto, technical co founder, developer intern etc. I think that's the biggest problem we have to solve here first...
Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. But with pagerank nobody complaint because the value was directly visible in the Google search results and it was just a website not a person that got a score. Know we're in the social age and it's not site's that are the publishers but people. And Klout is not the only one that's doing this, we are doing it, Google's doing with the G+ authorrank and Facebook probably has it as well in their edge rank.
The thing with Klout is that it's the only one that puts focusing on the person himself and touching your ego which can upset some people.
The applications and possibilities of the data are rarely thought of.