

Nowhere to Hide: Assessing Your Work Reputation Online - vrish88
http://gigaom.com/2011/02/20/nowhere-to-hide-assessing-your-work-reputation-online/

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bartonfink
"By now if you haven’t heard of Klout and in a moment of vanity checked your
own Klout score, you’re in the online minority. "

I have not checked my Klout score, and indeed until just now had no idea what
Klout actually was. When I looked at Klout's homepage, it requires a Twitter
account to search for someone. I don't use Twitter and I know I'm not the only
one, so I think this is pretty bogus as far as a reputation measurement goes.

I don't know how how this guy has decided that means I'm in an online
minority, but I do know that his Bartonphink score just took a dip.

~~~
vrish88
Klout is really just an arbitrary reputation ranking system, just like the
Bartonphink system. However the difference lies in what people conclude from
an individual's ranking. People use Bartonphink to rank someone on their
pertinence to bartonfink. People use Klout to "measure someone's online
influence". This is extraordinarily important to businesses looking to do
marketing, sales, customer service, etc.

The point I think you are missing is that Klout, and other ranking systems,
can give a quick and objective assessment of someone's value or ability in a
certain area.

Here's a list of ranking systems and what they indicate:

Klout -> online influence StackOverflow -> programming expertise FourSquare ->
loyalty to a business Credit Score -> fiscal responsibility HackerNews Karma
-> ability to provide interesting and pertinent points of conversation

~~~
bartonfink
I understand that, Vrish - and I agree. My point isn't with Klout
specifically, but rather the author's explicit assumption that I would even
care about it and that if I don't I'm in some sort of online minority.

My "online influence" has zero effect on my professional or personal life, and
I suspect the same is true for many other software engineers. That's the point
I was making, and the author's first erroneous sentence is roughly where I
stopped reading what he had to say.

~~~
vrish88
I disagree, for software engineers it is becoming more important to have a
greater online influence. Employers are looking more and more at how involved
people are in open source projects (eg. github profiles).

People with blogs and StackOverflow profiles public expose how much they
actually know about software development. Then when they have a greater
following or more points that is a validation that what are saying is
accurate.

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RonileSille13
I hate Klout scores. HATE. But once they evolve, so they're less gameable,
those in charge of hiring will definitely pay attention.

~~~
yalurker
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see how your twitter influence is
important to any job except for paid endorsements.

If I'm hiring an engineer, a project manager, or a designer, I care about
their ability to do the job, not about how much they influence their twitter
followers.

~~~
vrish88
There are numerous benefits to having someone with social influence work for
your company. Say your developer has a large following on Twitter.

\- Any problem that they don't know how to solve can be solicited to x number
of people. \- If they encounter a bug in 3rd party software that your company
uses and publicly bitch about it, the better chance you have to get a timely
fix. \- If your company uses/creates open source software, it is more
visibile, and there is a greater likelihood that more people will contribute
to it. \- They market your company. \- They attract more desirable hires.

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jonnathanson
When and if Klout (or something like it) becomes as ubiquitous as this article
predicts, then we should expect a giant upsurge in inane tweet-farming around
professional topics. I don't see how anyone benefits from the world thus
created.

Would much rather live in a Klout + Quora world than a Klout + Twitter world.

