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Klout Gets $8.5M to Create the Page Rank of the Social Web

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:35:40 +0000

As social media becomes more mainstream, many companies — especially marketers and advertisers — are desperately trying to figure out how to measure social influence online, apart from simply counting the number of Twitter followers a person has. Klout is one of the services trying to help them do that, and it just got some powerful help of its own: the San Francisco-based startup announced early Monday that it has closed an $8.5-million funding round from Silicon Valley powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, and is adding Kleiner partner Bing Gordon to its board of directors.

Klout started out focusing on Twitter, after founder and CEO Joe Fernandez had jaw surgery and spent his recovery posting on the social network and trying to figure out who to follow. The company has since added Facebook activity and LinkedIn content to its database, and is looking to add other social networks and activity as well. “People are really starting to understand the importance of influence on the social web,” Fernandez said in an email. “Obviously getting someone like KP to lead the round is some validation of that, but more importantly you can see it in the fact that we are working with companies like Virgin America, Disney, Fox, Audi and many others.”

Several companies have already experimented with offering special deals to customers who have high Klout scores, in an attempt to bolster word-of-mouth marketing via social media. The Palms Hotel and Casino has used Klout to put together a social influence group, while Virgin had discounts on flights to San Francisco. As social-media activity becomes more commonplace — thanks in part to the rapid growth of Facebook and Twitter — many companies are trying to figure out how to harness that phenomenon as a marketing tool. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has even talked about using social-networking influence as a method of determining how much to pay his employees.

As Bindu Reddy of MyLikes wrote recently at GigaOM, the social web needs something like Google’s Page Rank as a way of filtering out the noise, and Klout is trying to supply that by measuring a user’s “reach” and other metrics. The latest funding brings the total amount Klout has raised to $10 million, including a round of $1.5 million raised from Zelkova Ventures last April.

In addition to Kleiner Perkins, the most recent financing includes Greycroft Partners, as well as some of the angel investors who previously backed the company, including ff Asset Management, Tom McInerney, Paige Craig, Bobby Yazdani and Howard Lindzon. Klout competes with other social-media analytics companies including PeerIndex (which Techmeme editor Mahendra Palsule looked at recently) and Twinfluence. Twitter has also said it is working on its own influence ranking system.

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Post and thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr user The U.S. Army

Vid-Biz: Sezmi, KickApps, SAG

Liz Gannes — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:08:17 +0000

Sezmi Secures $28 Million; influx of cash comes on the heels of the set-top box company laying off 20 percent of its staff. (peHUB)

KickApps Raises More than $13 Million; white-label social networking site is working on Series C round. (peHUB)

SAG Seeks to Authorize Strike Vote; federally mediated talks between the actors’ union and the Hollywood studios broke down over the weekend. (Variety)

Sumner Redstone Under Pressure; tumbling share prices of Viacom and CBS hampering efforts to resolve debt issues of National Amusements, his family holding company. (Wall Street Journal)

MPAA Targets Fanedit.org; web community of hobbyists who make variations on movies will take down much of its site. (TorrentFreak)

Crackle Announces New Season; will debut Dec. 1 with renewals of shows like The Groundlings and new ones like Star-ving, the new comedy series from Married…with Children‘s David Faustino. (emailed release)

Eisner Might Want Prom Queen Movie; and he’s loving being an indie in the current media market. (New York Times)

New York Times Magazine Does Special on “Screens”; including How Napoleon Dynamite Stumps Netflix’s recommendations, an essay on becoming “screen literate,” and pictures of kids playing video games. (New York Times Magazine)

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How to (Really) Use SEO Effectively

Carleen Hawn — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:00:22 +0000

Aruni Gunasegaram is a popular contributor to Found|READ, so I’m now a regular visitor to her own blog, entrepreMusings.com. Tonight I ran across her current post, What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 2. As you’d expect, it details Aruni’s adventures in hiring a “search engine optimization” firm to help her current startup, BabbleSoft, amp its search page rank on Google.

Aruni hired her SEO firm in December, and she finally details some of the things she’s learned from the experience, including the results of her investment and the (possibly more helpful!) perspective she gained from an independent site-ranking source, which she stumbled upon, called Website Grader.

We have seen an increase in trial account sign ups and a few more sales, but I’m still waiting for the landslide! :-)
I know it is sometimes an experimental process with keyword selection, and I know since we aren’t selling cupcakes (i.e., a well understood product) that things might take a little longer. I know all of this and yet I still want (dare I say need) to see those results immediately because I’m fundraising…

I’m sure most of you can relate to this particular pressure, which is why Aruni’s post is definitely worth your review, especially true if you’ve ever considered hiring an SEO firm for your own startup site.

Before you do, consider Aruni’s final thought:

So my conclusion is that even if you have hired an SEO firm, take time to check out other SEO tools out there like Website Grader. You might just find something to ask your firm about and learn something about the process along the way. Even the best of teams and people sometimes require a little oversight. If they are a good team, they won’t get defensive and they’ll work to fix it right away and make it up to you with hopefully more than yummy looking billiard cupcakes!

For the whole of Aruni’s post click here. We also recommend part I in this series,
What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 1, published on January 24, 2008.

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