A Perfect Storm of Tweets



My 21st century homage to Georges de La Tour

And what happens if the groundswell is wrong?

Like many in New England, we were without power for the past couple of days (news flash: lack of electricity has an impact on the use of social media), and as usual during these events, we are hungry for information (as well as incredibly bored with a non-digital lifestyle when thrust upon us).

After going to a social media marketing presentation a while back, I decided to give Twitter a try. I confess, I didn't follow many, but those I did follow I found less than scintillating, and felt that they were simply one step above talking to themselves. During the storm, I think I would appreciated Twitter more if I had a select group to follow (I didn't even bother with any storm hashtags, as I assumed the volume of Tweets would be overwhelming, and I was wondering when I would be able to recharge my phone.)

I am glad, however, that my copy of "Groundswell" is the 11th edition, with an updated Chapter 10: Tapping the Groundswell with Twitter. 

When I first heard about Twitter, it seemed silly. And when I heard one of the Twitter evangelists almost wetting his pants with excitement about the fact that His Local Coffee Shop Could Tweet Him about Specials!!!!!, well, I figured, it's just the end of civilization as we know it. Maybe it's the grumpy old man in me, but I don't want to hear more from entities where I don't have any real personal relationship (and I am not even that enthusiastic about the ones I do have relationships with).

The limit of 140 characters (although I understand they are going to expand that, at least for some set of uses) did seem intriguing. And perfect for celebrities such as the Khardashians, who probably don't know enough words to use up more letters than that.

As with other strategies outlined in Groundswell, I can't quarrel with them, but many of the tactics they ask businesses to employ were (or should have been) done by responsive businesses in the analog era. The difference now is that we have added the elements of speed and visibility.

The example given about Fadra, the mommie-blogger hunting down the "correct" McDonald's action toy may be "feel good" (although curmudgeons like me wonder about parents advertising how happy they are that a corporation has co-opted their kid), I was more impressed with the use of Twitter to provide at least a semblance of immediate resolution and response to issues by companies such as AT&T, which, like other companies can now use Twitter as a formal customer support channel, and Intuit, which was able to build a stronger relationship by providing tax preparation advice.

While engagement with all forms of social media can be mutually beneficial, sometimes it may be adversarial, and in this chapter, the book didn't seem to give good, workable solutions to fighting deliberate misinformation. And then I wonder, are there times when you simply should not engage?

First, a little fun:

 

As a result of Hurricane Sandy, there were postings that demonstrated the lack of accountability and veracity provided when "anyone" can use social media. Tweets and pictures purporting to show effects of the storm that were deliberately faked or were from other weather events, or even from disaster movies quickly appeared:

But it can take a while for the ruse to be exposed. According to the Washington Post:

The Chinese Web has picked up on one of the most popular photos from Hurricane Sandy. It’s from Brigantine, N.J., and purports to show a shark swimming through the town’s flooded streets. It was originally posted by a guy named Kevin McCarty, who earlier posted another shark-in-Jersey photo that TheAtlantic.com’s Alexis Madrigal demonstrated was fake. It’s been shared almost 7,000 times on Facebook and has now made its way over to China, where users on the country’s massive Twitter-like service, Weibo, picked it up. (Spotted by Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter.)
 

You can see a slide show of similar photos at WKYC news.


But it's not all fun

While there was an amusing side to this, there are more serious implications to consider. Particularly as stories "go viral" there can be an assumption of truth (and of course, as time goes by, and more and more fake stories are exposed, it may then reverse and create the assumption that most information through social media is wrong). You can't win.

Slate reported on the false story about NY Stock exchange being flooded, how the tweeter was outed by Buzzfeed, and the implications for effects of false stories on financial markets: BuzzFeed Outs Twitter User Believed To Be Behind Sandy's Biggest Lie, by Josh Voorhees, posted Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, at 1:00 PM ET

The Sandy-themed whopper that caused the most fuss was that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was under three feet of water, something that was reported as fact by CNN and others late last night before Twitter users moved quickly to self-correct the false report.

And in another article, Will Oremus considered the effect of false reports during an emergency:

Dear Twitter, Don't Believe Everything You Hear on a Police Scanner.

 

We also see social media promoting their own version of medical and scientific theory, where again, it can directly affect people's health and well being. Most famously, Jenny McCarthy, a model and actress, led the now discredited fight against childhood vaccination, believing it caused autism. And in this Sunday's New York Times, the article: A Controversial ‘Cure’ for M.S., by Paul Tullis talked about a medically unproven surgical therapy for multiple sclerosis, promoted by a Dr.Zamboni:

 

Even Zamboni agrees with this sentiment. “With this big attention in social networks, it has generated a black market with speculation, with not properly performed procedures,” he says. “It’s unethical to offer a treatment when it’s in an experimental phase.”

 

(And already the reader comments on-line for this article include stories of "cures" due to this procedure, and other unconventional therapies.)

All right, all right, I'll get to my point

So what happens with a false hit and run blog post, Tweet (or re-Tweet)? As we know with traditional media, everyone remembers the "sexy" part of the story, and when proven untrue, the retraction/correction appears briefly, in a far less prominent position. Yes, if the story seems hot enough, social media can be self-policing, but do you really foresee Tweets of "I was wrong" going viral? 

Are the stories about "Twitter revolution" giving social media  the appearance of authority it doesn't yet deserve? And will social media threats be the Tylenol scare of our generation? The use of Twitter over other media may give it an immediacy that makes it less liable to careful scrutiny, which brings us to Mr. Liberty Mutual .

In spite of the name, this is not an official site, but a place where one person/group has made a personal crusade against the insurance company. And boy, do they have an axe to grind:

 

I noticed that there is apparently no official input from Liberty Mutual on the Mr. Liberty Mutual site  or Twitter feed (and, like many corporations, a Google search on "Liberty Mutual Complaints" turns up many web sites built expressly for the purpose of venting frustration).

Perhaps they see no upside in participating when the playing field is not level. One difficulty is that any message from "corporate" can be dissected, invalidated, disclaimed, mocked, etc. by an entity with no (responsibility) to provide a full story, or even to guarantee the validity of the information they present.

But in fact, if you look at the official Twitter account for Liberty Mutual, you will see  that they are aware of social media, and using it as a tool to respond to their customers (as well as providing other ways to interact with the company).

 

 

 

While this is not likely to satisfy the "complaint" sites, simply by being there it does provide a counterbalance, that can make customers realize that there is possibly more than one side to any story.

 

Author's note:

When googling for information about the Tylenol case, I found this link is to a nicely written, concise set of case studies by Jennifer Hogue. This appears to be a class assignment she completed in 2001 on crisis managent/PR. No other information was provided on her site.




 

 

 

Put it on Plastic!

Monitoring Square Card Payment Systems (Part 1)

 

I am following Square mobile payment system. With the app and mini-reader on your smart phone, you can accept credit card payments without a merchant account. While Square has other uses as well, there are some segments that are prime targets for the card swiping capability. These include artisans and retailers of merchandise at non-fixed locations such as craft and art fairs, farmer's markets, antique shows. In the past, obtaining a merchant account without a fixed retail location was difficult, the paperwork too cumbersome for sporadic usage, and for small volume sellers, the swipe fees too high. Square provides a swipe pad that attaches to a smart phone or tablet, and the transaction is completed by the customer and a receipt emailed to them. This would seem to be a neat and elegant solution, but in my experience, I am not seeing a lot of implementation.

 

There seem to be so many ways to take money from our bank accounts and wallets that we may not have noticed much about Square so far.

 

My analysis will look at the penetration of this company on social media, and to see if they are missing opportunities to engage the groundswell and make this card swiping service more well known and used.

 

Jack Dorsey, the founder of Square, is already well known in the tech world. Jack Dorsey has developed other applications that use data to manage transactions efficiently, beginning with a program for dispatching taxis. His is probably most famous for his role as a founder of twitter.

"His three guiding principles, which are shared by the whole company and through its culture, are simplicity, constraint and craftsmanship" - wikipedia

 

From a Slate.com article by Farhad Manjoo posted Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012: Silicon Valley’s Next Great Company:

 

"I believe the tech industry’s next great company is Square..... But calling Square a mere payments company minimizes its potential, and it misses Dorsey’s world-changing mission. Dorsey is bent on creating frictionless commerce. His long-term goal is to make accepting payments a breeze for businesses, and he wants to make paying for stuff invisible—for everyone, across the entire economy, for all types of goods and services"

Square in the mainstream news:

Recently Square began a new payment system with Starbucks, allowing customers to make purchases with minimal interaction, and this announcement has created a great deal of buzz for the company:

Though smartphone payments have a long way to go before they replace wallets altogether, Starbucks’s adoption of Square will catapult the start-up’s technology onto street corners nationwide, and is the clearest sign yet that mobile payments could become mainstream. - New York Times, August 8, 2012.

And in a New York Post article by Sara Ashley O'Brien Oct. 14, 2012: Square deals have Dorsey all aTwitter

"(Square)...will now have access to the masses at more than 7,000 participating company-owned Starbucks locations.

The stores will utilize Square for its credit- and debit-card transactions, as well as make themselves available on Square’s Pay With Square app. And last week an analyst reported that the company was expanding its deal with New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission to outfit 1,200 additional cabs with its mobile-payment system. "

 

 

The questions:  

• How is Square currently engaged in social media, both proactively from the company, and from the groundswell? 
• Are the target group merchants and customers a demographic likely to follow social media? 
• How does the prime competitor, PayPal, look on social media? 
• Will the Starbucks alliance buzz for Square cross over to the card-swipe division?

First Steps:
 Getting started seemed straightforward enough, but I encountered one difficulty: the ubiquity of the word "square" on the internet can make it hard to gather concise data, and while using the term "square payment system" improved things, it means I will need to be consistent when making comparisons.




Data from socialmention.com, October 14, 2012

My first step was to see if anyone was actually talking about Square on social media. A quick look at socialmention.com did not seem that promising, when I saw "strength" at 1%, however, the "sentiment" is a ratio of positive to negative mentions is good, as are the passion and reach numbers.

You can find a desciption of these caluculations on the socialmention FAQ.

I then took a look at PayPal. I expected the strength to be higher, as PayPal seems to have far more market penetration than Square. But I was still not sure what this was telling me, if anything.



PayPal data from socialmention.com, October 24, 2012

So, my next step was to try searching for both Square and PayPal complaints.

Comparison of "complaint" between Square (left) and Paypal (right)
 

 

 Again, puzzling, when you consider the results given when performing a google search for "paypal complaints". Looking at the excerpts from the posts referenced through the tool, it became apparent that many of them were not specific to the product, but were about something else, which used one of these products as the payment mechanism.

So, on to another source, Addictomatic. A search there found a lot of mention of Square, however, most, if not all of these were mentions on tech blogs. Fine for the company and analysts, but not likely sources of information for potential merchant customers.

One obvious next step: A google search for "how to accept credit card payments at craft shows" seemed like a gold mine of opportunity for one specific market:

 

I went to alexa.com to get another overall picture of Square; this gives us some more clues about users, but only in terms of website query and acess.

Alexa Statistics Summary for squareup.com

Squareup.com is ranked #8,704 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, and the time spent in a typical visit to it is roughly five minutes, with 54 seconds spent on each pageview. Compared with internet averages, the site's users are disproportionately Caucasian, and they tend to be moderately educated, childless users earning over $30,000 who browse from work. It has a bounce rate of roughly 30% (i.e., 30% of visits consist of only one pageview). Squareup.com is particularly popular among users in the cities of Miami (where it is ranked #1,512), San Francisco (#1,538), and Los Angeles (#2,052).Squareup.com is ranked #8,704 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, and the time spent in a typical visit to it is roughly five minutes, with 54 seconds spent on each...

 

Note that users spend almost 5 minutes on site (although hard to quantify whether visiting for info or managing account).

Next steps:
For the purposes of marketing the swipe application to small/itinerant businesses, participants in forums may be a place to start. As this project continues, I will investigate more of these in detail, and attempt to devise more complex searches to measure what may be happening in this area.

An addictomatic search on "accepting credit cards at craft shows" still showed results that were from news/tech sources, rather than "groundswell" results.

The next step is to get more detailed analysis of any mentions of the Square system on social media.

 More to follow...

 

How Far is "Too Far"?

 And who will set the limits?

While the internet and social media have been incredible forces for building community, pursuing and disseminating information, and even helping to overthrow oppressive regimes, it seems that every week in the news there is some internet-related story that makes you wonder just how far humans have evolved from apes.

For the benefit of the younger members of this class, I am going to tell you about an earlier age, when the big communication medium was network television. We had broadcasts of scripted, weekly performances, usually sponsored (paid for) by consumer goods manufacturers and retailers. It was a wonderful world back then. Watching these shows was evidence that the world was good, and that there were no divorces, gays, minorities, or drug use (unless you count Geritol and cigarettes).

You didn't need to talk back to television shows (unless you were a crazy person), since communications experts (ok, the sponsors) knew what was best for you, and made sure nothing was offensive. Their financial power took care of this, with the helpful enforcement of the network censors and the FCC (still on nipple concealment patrol to this day).


Then things loosened up, and sponsorship of shows went away in favor of individual advertising spots. With the advent of cable, it seemed as though everything was going to hell in a hand-basket (those of a certain age still jump when they hear foul language coming out of the box in the living room). But, as they always do, advertisers found opportunities here, but could still pull back nervously if the public seemed to tack against what was shown.



Rush Limbaugh booking photo, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, April 2006

Prominent personalities such as Don Imus, with his comments about the Rutgers' Womens' basketball team, and Rush Limbaugh, with his comments about Sandra Fluke were not immune from advertisers' ire (although, in time, after intense soul-searching - aka: looking at the ratings - they returned from purgatory. 

Now with the internet and social media, we have a lively forum for a serious exchange of social, cultural and philosophical issues. As if. There is often debate in the United States as to where freedom of speech ends and harassment, obscenity, etc. begin, and social media is the new playground for this. It was always possible, but not always feasible or practical to publish (on your own, if no one else was willing), but with the ease and lack of financial considerations for blogging, posting or commenting on web sites (or for that matter, having your own web site), the floodgates seem to have opened wide.

But things seemed to have reached a new low this past week, when Michael Brutsch, a user on Reddit.com (an open forum/aggregator type site) was outed.

"...last week when Gawker revealed the identity of user Violentacrez, who was known to start hundreds of forums, including one called “Jailbait” that featured pictures of underage girls. After the Gawker article appeared, Brutsch was quickly fired, and a debate about anonymity on Reddit ensued. " - Slate Magazine, October 19, 2012

 

When interviewed on CNN, Brutsch claimed that he was just being provocative, and said:  

"Reddit needs to step up....if I hadn't been allowed to run wild, I wouldn't have"

 

 

 

So what does this have to do with us? You may now need to consider what the relationship between those wishing to advertise/exploit social media sites and who the audience/participants on those sites will be. While engaging the groundswell, there may be pitfalls for your organization (or in some cases, perhaps opportunities).

 

As the old saying goes, "You are known by the company you keep". In the "Violentacrez" case, it is likely that while Reddit has an all-encompassing variety of material, it will be known for the more questionable sections. You may have tactics for responding to adverse information about your product or organization, but what about offensive information not related to your business, but simply appearing in proximity?

 

Will marketers (whether commercial, political -as if there's a difference), activists and interest groups pull back, and avoid sites with lack of control? Will they hold their noses and go where the clicks and eyeballs are (even while pretending to be aghast), or simply try to exert pressure as they did in the old sponsorship days?

 

Any of the "free" social media services come with the tacit agreement that, just as with the network broadcasters, we will have commercials put in front of us. This advertising revenue is the lifeblood of these sites, so I am pretty sure that while a provider may fight for free speech against government intervention, advertisers with cash on the line will have the greater say.

 

But in the meantime, when attempting to manage your "brand", pay attention to where you can be found on the internet. As my mother used to say, "Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas". In fact, I found a song about it:

 

 

 

Uh oh, I just listened to all the lyrics. Stop playing that right now! Instead,  let's leave with this one, from the Alan Parsons Project:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Late breaking addition: This group using social media to raise awareness of the need for cancer diagnosis might find an audience with "edgier" forums that traditional groups may avoid. We'll see if it goes viral.

Found on http://www.socialmeteor.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you make an organization Listen?

One of the first rules of digital communication is to not do so when you are in an agitated state, but sometimes it cannot be helped. This post will have a more serious tone than my others (well, ok, I'll stick in a Dilbert strip).



Copyright by Scott Adams and used without permission.

The Situation (no, not that one)

I work with an organization, the Historical Society of Early American Decoration (HSEAD) that has a purported goal of increasing membership, enrollment in classes, or at the very least, improved public awareness of the organization. While this would seem a natural for social media, the current demographics place our members in the segments least likely to use these tools; unfortunately, our target market for new members will likely be using them as a matter of course.

What is most frustrating, and making me consider ending my relationship with this group, is that while they could benefit from the ideas in The Groundswell, the first step may need to be beating them over the head with a hardcover edition of the book.

So, how do you get them to recognize the importance of social media and explore ways of leveraging it for your organization? You can start with the basics.

 

Listening

In Chapter 5 of The Groundswell, Li and Bernoff address Listening, something they acknowledge is "the most neglected skill in business", but the groundswell makes it easy.

A brief, telling example. HSEAD has a narrow focus, and strict adherence to terminology. In other words, we "tell", but we don't listen. The general public is likely to refer to much of what we do as "tole painting", however, that term is technically incorrect, and HSEAD members will get quite huffy if you use it in their presence, as they consider it quite inferior.

But that is not what our potential "customers" think. I performed the following two Google Searches:

"Free Tole Painting Patterns" :135,000 hits (with a high percentage of relevant links)

"Free Country Painting Patterns": 29,4000,4000 hits  (high number, but almost none of them were what HSEAD means by "country painting")

(Note that including "Free" was done to determine if there was something of value provided to spur engagement).

When suggesting that HSEAD should  provide some "free" content, it was rejected out of fear that people won't join if they get things "for free". (Note: HSEAD could post a free pattern every week, and would not exhaust their archive within my lifetime). Video? Then "they" won't sign up for "our" classes.

This is an example of what Li and Bernoff call "the no more being stupid factor" (p. 97). A potential market is rejecting these stubborn ideas.

Free video? Sure, but likely engages many users, and for commercial operations, sells books, supplies and yes, classes. Here's one from Global Art Supply:

Where do you go to Listen?

HSEAD does not even know who their potential customers/members are. Our other attempts at outreach have been in traditional areas where we see what appear to be obvious links. However, through our  Facebook page, I am seeing something resonate with people who do not fit our obvious market.

 

Would you have expected to see the following in regard to "Early American Decoration"?

 

By networking with my new Japanese "friends", I have discovered a sub-culture of western-style decorative painting in Japan - a market we were not aware of, let alone tapped!

While our Facebook page has been slow to get going, every day with a new "like" is a cause for celebration; here are some of the Facebook Insights (large views):

 

Interesting to see demographics; active membership in organization by males is probably less than 2% - but higher on Facebook.

 

 

Do you want to energize the groundswell?

We are now  going to jump a bit here, across two chapters, to Chapter 7, where Li and Bernoff outline the steps for "Energizing the Groundswell". Again, for HSEAD, the first step is most critical:  Do you want to energize the groundswell?

This question does not have the obvious answer, since it requires some organization soul-searching.

I feel as though I am the social media evangelist in the organization, but am not sure how committed the organization is (Ok, I don't think they are committed at all). And a big part of it is that for the most part, they don't use social media. In my case, it may be a generational issue, but as seen in the following from from John Taylor's blog: You Can’t Understand Social Media if You Don’t Participate; it can happen at much higher levels:

"I was talking with a friend of mine who works in Corporate Communications at a big company and she mentioned how her team had embraced social media. ... So did she start a blog? Join Twitter? Was she posting to her company’s Facebook page? Contributing to their online forums?

Nope. She’s got her team doing all of that. She supervises."

Sure, HSEAD knows that "we have to have a website", but it is a static website - no comments, no blogging, no video - no welcome! At first, they did not even show pictures on the home page - much less any of the people who create the work!

Our Home Page

Our Landing Page

Will Listening to the groundswell change HSEAD?

There are some additional cultural and organization issues to deal with if we want to immerse ourselves in the Groundswell:

Letting go of control, a fear that people won't join if they get things "for free". (Note: HSEAD could post a free pattern every week, and would not have drained their archive within my lifetime). Video? Then "they" won't sign up for "our" classes.

The organization needs to clearly define itself - a technical/how-to group? Social? A visual experience? Offering validation (through judging work) may connect with those who look for this same validation in their use of social media.

Will it change HSEAD? I sure hope so.

The Numbers Game

Counting your friends and followers - signs of influence or narcissism?

As with other aspects of modern culture, social media suffers from an obsession with numbers. Is this simply part of a human need to quantify information, or is something else at play once individuals can interact on a limitless playing field with few barriers to entry?


I walk her, feed her, let  her on my bed, and she still won't "Friend" me on Facebook.

Every morning on our Boston area TV news there seems to be a report about something going viral with x number of views, x number of hits, x number of twitter followers, or a celebrity with x number of "friends" on Facebook.

When I saw the article Are 5,001 Facebook Friends One Too Many? by Aimee Lee Ball,  published May 28, 2010 in the New York Times, I thought it was another "faux trend", but a Google search revealed that some individuals were actually concerned about Facebook's limit of 5,000 friends and are looking for solutions. (If you want more, you need a business page or fan page, but this seems unacceptable to these users.) So we now have a new status symbol - Facebook waiting lists.

According to the article,

"friending sustains an illusion of closeness in a complex world of continuous partial attention,” said Roger Fransecky, a clinical psychologist and executive coach in New York (2,894 friends)."

Now, we know these are not all really "friends", and there is a suggestion that there is a physical limit to the number of actual, stable relationships a human can have, known as Dunbar's number, and that number is approximately 150.

  

But, if you are still looking for more "friends", here is some advice, from a Facebook "expert" :

 

 

 

Now certainly, for celebrities, brands, commercial enterprises and organizations, there is a real value here. But for the average person?

Twitter is another exercise in status by numbers. When the news reports on celebrity tweets, unless it is something embarrassing or controversial, the content is not the issue, but the number of followers and retweets.




Gretchen and Bill Voth, New York Times photo. " But that wasn’t a day to have the phone attached to the hip."

And it's not just the number of Twitter followers - you want to be trending - in the NYT Sunday Times Style section, Sept. 9, 2012 there was a report on the wedding hashtag trend about couples whose friends were determined that the wedding would be a "trending event" on Twitter. (Of course, almost all involved, including brides and grooms are in the social marketing field, which makes this entire exercise suspect.)
The story of one couple in the Times article was picked up in a variety of social media sites - including a blog " "Love, Brittney" (enough said) and comments from the couple threaten to take the word "disingenuous" to new heights:

BILL: Well, it wasn't really anything we did. Mike Solarte (@MikeSolarte), a sports broadcasting colleague of mine, got the ball rolling the morning of the wedding. He figured it would be something we'd enjoy. People then caught onto the hashtag and it kind of took off. It certainly helped that Gretchen and I are both social media dorks (Note: both of them have careers in social media and content managment/publicity), but we weren't all that aware of what was going on. Neither of us did a lot of tweeting that day, which was hard for us. But that wasn’t a day to have the phone attached to the hip.

GRETCHEN: We never in our wildest dreams imagined we’d have such a talked-about wedding. I think it’s safe to say that making #vothwedding trend locally was one of the most unique gifts our friends and family could have given us.

This article in Slate, Twitter Is Really Bad at Measuring Your Online Influence. Let's Keep It That Way, by Will Oremus, posted Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2012, talks about the quality of measurements in social media.

In the article, Twitter cofounder and board member Ev Williams shares concerns that there is an emphasis on the number of followers, versus the influence of the users. The author of the article, Will Oremus, talks about the use of tools that purport to measure Twitter influence, and is not in favor of them:

"Attaching a rating to each participant only reinforces the idea that it’s a contest rather than a discussion—and there are already too many people on the site who treat it that way."

 

Then there are the tools that purport to measure the quality of your social media presence. One of them, Klout, offers the following according to their site:

"Klout measures your influence based on your ability to drive action on social networks. We crunch your social data to give you insight into how influential you are and what you are influential about."

Hey, it's "free", so I registered. Now, I didn't expect much here, particularly since I wasn't going to allow the site to access apps whether or not I was using them, or hand over my Linkedin password, etc. But I still came up with a Klout score of 10 (out of 100). I suspect that they give everyone at least 10 points so they don't get depressed. To add to the narcissism factor, Klout will also share information with your social media "friends".

While it may be a useful tool to check your Klout score if you have business reasons (you work in the media, your last name is Kardashian, etc.), it seems to run the risk of being another digital status symbol. So, let's not lose sight of the need for quality in our communications and relationships, and not rely on measurements that may be of dubious validity.
 

The following cartoon is taken from the October 1, 2012 issue of The New Yorker magazine, with no permission whatsoever. 

 

 

 

Last minute update since the original post - two articles from Slate.com:

Buying Twitter Followers

Could Your Crummy Klout Score Keep You From Getting a Job