As a blogger myself, I have a love hate relationship with Klout, a measure of social influence, and am aware of its many flaws.  Klout has come under a lot of scrutiny over the last few years for its lack of transparency, dodgy privacy rules and questionable algorithm.  However, many Brands/PRs still use this as trusted measure of influence when deciding who to reach out to online. 

One of my biggest complaints was the exclusion of a number of platforms.  In my case, the fact that it doesn’t include self-hosted WordPress blogs.  However, I’ve done a bit of research and as far as I can tell, this hasn’t negatively impacted me that much.  I asked a few fellow friendly bloggers, to disconnect their Blogger blogs for a few days to see if it affected their scores and it didn’t.

However, late last week I noticed that my Klout score had jumped 4 places.  After a quick Google search, I learned that Klout is now including Instagram, an online photo-sharing and social networking service, to its algorithm.

‘Over 77 percent of users who have connected their Instagram accounts will see a score increase between 1 and 5 points’

Is this an attempt to rebuild its reputation?  What does this mean for businesses?  Will it make the site more credible and relevant?  Is this a reaction to the increasing popularity of Kred?

Hopefully we will see more platforms being added to Klout in future so we can confidently use it as a trustworthy measure of online influence.