Last week I was doing some housecleaning of sorts with Google+. I had moved from the gmail.com account to using my Google domain account. As a result I noticed that my Klout score took a slight dip:

No, not the big dip you see…the smaller dip just to the left. Turns out that the number of +1’s, shares, and comments to the old G+ account had an effect on my Klout score, dropping it 0.94 points in one day. Being the inquisitive type of person (and knowing that there is no real value to Klout anyway but I will save that for a different post) I decided to do an experiment.

On my Klout page there is a section for Facebook statistics. Unfortunately for the past year or so all it has ever said is “Facebook activity statistics are coming soon.” I am fairly certain the Mayans are coming faster than these statistics.

Anyway, I decided to remove the connection to Facebook since it didn’t appear to matter anyway. So I did, and the result is the rather large drop in my Klout score by 2.69 points.

Have you ever read the Klout page that explains how they do their scoring? I have. Here is the pertinent part I want you to pay attention to:

“Influence is built over time

In most instances, your influence should not radically change from one day to the next. The Klout Score is based on a rolling 90-day window, with recent activity being weighted more than older activity. So being inactive over the weekend or taking short break won’t have a major impact on your Score, but if you’re inactive for longer periods your Score will decrease gradually.”

Really? I don’t see how that can be true. And I reconnected my Facebook account the next day and then saw a jump by 2.81 points. Hey…wait a second…I gained .12 points and all I did was disconnect and reconnect one network? Hmmm….I wonder if I can keep doing that and inch my way towards 60? And now I wonder why I would ever care (sorry, that is a different blog post).

What I do believe this means is that we should be able to disconnect a network, measure the drop, reconnect, then repeat with a different network. The idea is that we should be able to see just how important each of the networks are for your overall score. This means you could then get an idea as to which network you should focus on in order to increase your Klout score. Is it Flickr? Instagram? YouTube?

Go ahead and try unplugging one network at a time and see where the data takes you.

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