Maggie Leifer McGary is a mother, social media fan, and blogger. The social media sites she has includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, and she is on Klout. Klout is a popular site that assigns you a score based on its analysis of how influential you are on the social web.
Something very strange happened just days before Halloween. Ms. McGary decided to check her Klout profile and above her score are the names of those she had influenced which is calculated by Klout. She noticed that her 13 year old son Matthew appeared on her profile. Matthew never set up a Klout page, Klout automatically created a page for him and gave him a score. Matthew was only a friend of his mother on facebook. Ms. McGary's 15 year old daughter Mimi then appeared on her Klout page as well asking her to invite Mimi to join.
Ms. McGary stated, "It freaked me out because these are my kids. It's wrong. They shouldn't be marketing to children." After this incident happens, Klout no longer creates profiles automatically for people and if you own a Klout you can now delete a profile entirely.
Klout finds information about people from publicly avaliable sources such as engagement on Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, post and followers on Twitter, and so on. Joe Fernandez is the chief executive of Klout and says that rates are based on how people engage with the content you create. “Let’s say you and I were friends on Facebook, and I had commented on your Facebook wall,” Mr. Fernandez said. “Klout would see that, and I would get a score from my post on your wall.” Klout has turned off that feature though.
This site can be used by anyone to gauge someones popularity, for example, teachers, employers, homecoming queen committee and etc.
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