Whether you loved it or loathed it, the Influencers in Travel website was extremely popular within the travel community and generated a great deal of buzz (and debate) about the most influential people in the industry. Klout has categorised social media users by topics of influence since last year, but a few months ago they introduced a +K voting mechanism, allowing users to vote for their influential peers based on topic and contribute to Klout’s scoring algorithm.
Introducing Klout Topic Pages
Yesterday, Klout introduced their latest feature: Topic Pages. Effectively, Topic Pages are a way of browsing the most influential users on Klout by the topics which they’re associated with. Curiously, however, Klout doesn’t actually rank users based on their Klout scores – opting instead to create three separate lists for each Topic Page: Top Influencers, Top +K Recipients and Best Content.
While “Top +K Recipients” is fairly self-explanatory and “Best Content” seems to be based on tweets/statuses which have been shared the most, “Top Influencers” list remains somewhat of a mystery. That being said, we did get one very interesting insight into its mechanic from Klout Marketing Manager, Megan Berry – who told us:
[The Topic Pages are] all using the same metrics but to be on a topic page requires you to get engagement from other influencers in that topic. I.e. to be a top political influencer you need to get engagement from other top political influencers so what it takes to get that engagement may vary by vertical.
It’s refreshing to see that peer-review is part of the ranking algorithm for the influencers list in a system where everybody wants to be on top. But will this method lead to a fair and accurate ranking system? Or will it simply become a clique of Klout aficionados who spend all day voting for each other to stay at the top? On the subject of “gaming the system”, Megan told Travelllll.com the following:
We’re watching +K carefully but since we limit people to 5 +K a day we haven’t seen issues as of yet.
The new Topic Pages are currently only available to a select few users, with full rollout happening over the course of the next few weeks. If you’re one of the lucky ones with early access, you should be able to view the new influencers in travel list on Klout.
Big Improvement? Or Room for Improvement?
Competition is hard to avoid in any community or industry and no matter how irrelevant it can often be, we simply love to compare ourselves to others. Klout, it would seem, have filled this void in our hearts and minds perfectly and created the ultimate replacement for the original Influencers in Travel website. What do you think? Is this an accurate way to measure who the most important people in the digital travel market are? Do you think that this is an improvement over Klout score based ranking lists? How could they make it better? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
One of the most fatal flaws of Klout scores – and, indeed, any ranking system dependent on Klout scores – is that Klout itself is extremely manipulable and prone to inaccurately reflect Twitter users’ status of influence. The Klout topics page seems to partially eradicate this problem – by giving the power of defining success and influence back to the masses. It’s not without flaws: one may say networking is now key to expanding your sphere of influence, yet others may argue the topics page is one big biased popularity contest. Getting your mates to give you +K’s on daily dosages, for instance, can be perceived as as deceptive as boosting your Klout score by spam-tweeting. But then, word-of-mouth and active social interaction trump losing out to metrics manipulators.
As an advocate of the organic growth of your social media presence, the topics page is definitely an advancement. As of the competition the stakes are now higher; being solely the broadcaster is not enough – only becoming the networker as well will allow you to rise above your peers.
I think one of the problems with any “influencers” list (whether it’s produced by Klout or someone else) is that it’s about social networking, not about true impact on active travelers. A Lonely Planet author, an active TripAdvisor contributor, or someone who posts regularly on the Cruise Critic forums may have more real clout–note the “c” spelling–than a popular travel blogger with a posse does.
I like the Klout listing! ;-)
OK… the Klout lists is not the non-plus-ultra, but it’s one of many different stats which should get considered by people who wants to work with social media and/or travel bloggers.
Algorithmic rankings of “influence” are meaningless at this point, because the rankers have access to so little data. Just as important, the question of “Who’s an influencer?” needs to be narrowed down with questions such as “What kind of influence are you talking about? Influencing chatter, or influencing travel purchases? And what types of people are being influenced? Armchair travelers? Active travelers? Rich travelers or backpackers? Young hipsters, middle-aged empty-nesters, or the elderly?”
A useful “influence score” might draw on data such as traffic, demographics, nature of content (e.g., Twitter posts or travel-planning articles), and search rankings–assuming that such data were readily available to third-party ranking services, which isn’t the case. It would also need to be customized for the query at hand: For example, a blog about backpacking might be influential with backpackers, but it’s unlikely that it would be influential with mainstream travelers, jetsetters, cruisers, or most other subgroups of travelers.
Looks like the same names at the top as before to me…;)
As it stands, the system is flawed. I look after multiple accounts for social media including many Facebook Pages, Twitter Accounts, Blogger, LinkedIn pages, Flickr, so on and so forth. The problem is in the fact that you can only link so many accounts. So I had to make 3 accounts. My personal one came up at 48, then my business came up at 23, then my tour group business came up at 32.
If I had been able to link the accounts properly I would have had a higher Klout score, but I realized that the time spent to hook all of this up was not worth it in the long run. By the way, Melvin does deserve the top rung, that is accurate.