Klout is out and there's nothing pouty. Lithium Technologies, which bought Klout in 2014 for allegedly $ 200 million, has announced that it will close the site before May 25.
May 25 is, coincidentally, also the deadline for companies to comply with the new European data privacy rules. And although it is not explicitly stated, GDPR could have played a role in the downfall of Klout. "Klout as an independent service is not aligned with our long-term strategy," wrote Peter Hess, CEO of Lithium, in a blog post.
When it was launched, the controversial social reputation service allowed users to link their social media accounts to discover which topics are experts based on the publications they have shared and the friends with whom they are connected. Once Klout analyzed his presence on the Internet, it would give him an influential score. Public figures such as President Barack Obama and Justin Bieber, for example, were given a perfect score of 100, while others complained that their scores did not reflect their true expertise. Klout also began partnering with brands to offer offers, discounts and product samples to users who maintained a score above a certain threshold; the Perks function closed in 2015.
While the concept was extinguished in the USA. UU Due to privacy problems of personal data and the vagaries of a passing fad, people live in China, where the government is testing a social credit system that would determine the eligibility of people to board planes and trains based on their social score. It is not exactly the same as Klout, but both scoring systems sound very similar to the episodes of Black Mirror .
You still have a few weeks to check your influential scores, but even after Klout dies, it may not be the last time we hear of Lithium. The publication of Hess's blog indicates that Klout can take a second life as a tool within some lithium services. He writes: "We are also planning the launch of a new social impact scoring methodology based on Twitter." That sounds … premonitory.
