What Happened to Klout? The Klout Score, 2008 to 2018
Klout scored your social influence from 1 to 100. Lithium bought it for $200 million in 2014 and closed it on May 25, 2018. The timeline, dated.
Klout was a website and app that rated your social media influence with a "Klout Score" from 1 to 100. Lithium Technologies bought it for $200 million on March 27, 2014. It shut Klout down on May 25, 2018, the same day Europe's GDPR privacy law took effect. Lithium's CEO, Pete Hess, said Klout gave his company "valuable artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities." He added that "Klout as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy."
We read Wikipedia's article, Social Media Today's report, the registry record and the address itself on October 23, 2026, and Google's results that day.
What happened to Klout, step by step?
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2008 | First version goes online |
| Jan 2012 | Raises about $30 million |
| Mar 2013 | Instagram joins the score |
| May 2013 | 1 million Perks claimed |
| Mar 27, 2014 | Lithium buys it, $200M |
| May 10, 2018 | Shutdown announced |
| May 25, 2018 | Klout closes |
Wikipedia's article on Klout, Social Media Today of May 11, 2018, and TechCrunch's report of May 10, 2018 as Google shows it, read October 23, 2026.
Wikipedia says the closure "had been planned for some time and was accelerated by" the GDPR coming into force. Lithium also said it would launch "a new social impact scoring methodology based on Twitter," Social Media Today reported. Its X account now says "Klout has been shut down, and this Twitter handle is no longer active," as Google shows it.
What was the Klout Score?
It was one number for your influence online. Klout pulled data from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, YouTube, Wikipedia and Bing, Wikipedia's article says. On Twitter it counted followers, retweets, list memberships, mentions and "how influential the people who retweet you were." Three smaller measures sat under it: "true reach," "amplification" and "network impact."
Brands paid for the score's main use. Klout's Perks program let a company offer free products to users who matched set scores, topics and places. By May 2013, users had claimed more than 1 million Perks across over 400 campaigns.
Why did people stop trusting the Klout Score?
The score didn't always match real influence. Barack Obama, then the US president, once had a lower Klout Score than some bloggers, Wikipedia notes. Klout changed its formula in October 2011 and lowered many scores, which brought complaints.
The bigger problem was what drove the number. A researcher, Sean Golliher, found that "the simple logarithm of the number of followers was sufficient to explain 95% of the variance" in Klout Scores. If a follower count drives a score, buying followers moves the score too. Social Media Today made the same point in 2018, noting that such measures "can be easily gamed."
Is Klout still around?
No. The service hasn't run since May 25, 2018. The klout.com domain is still registered, since March 18, 2004, and renewed until March 2028. On October 23, 2026, the address didn't load a page for us, because its secure connection failed.
| Site | What it is |
|---|---|
| kloutco.com | A creator business tool |
| Klout app | A creator app, Africa |
| klout.tv | A course for filmmakers |
| klout.club | An influence score app |
Google's top 10 for "klout," US, October 23, 2026.
These are separate businesses that use the name. None of their pages, as Google shows them, says it's the Klout that closed in 2018. If one asks you to log in with your social accounts, treat it as a new company you haven't checked yet.
What replaced the Klout Score?
There's no single score now. Brands look at each app's own numbers: followers, reach and engagement rate, which is likes and comments divided by followers. Our engagement rate calculator works that out from your own posts. It's harder to fake than a follower count, which is part of why brands moved to it.
For a few free likes and views on a public post, with no password, Hclout's free tier gives 12 free Instagram likes and 100 free Instagram views on the free page. A short Cloudflare check runs before each claim.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to Klout?
Lithium Technologies bought it for $200 million in 2014 and shut it down on May 25, 2018, the day the GDPR took effect.
Is Klout still around?
No. The service closed in 2018, and klout.com doesn't load a page. Other businesses now use the Klout name.
How was the Klout Score calculated?
From your activity and followers on networks like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, on a scale of 1 to 100. One researcher found the log of follower count explained 95% of the variance.
Why did Klout shut down?
Lithium's CEO said Klout "as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy." Wikipedia says the GDPR sped up a closure already planned.
Who bought Klout?
Lithium Technologies, on March 27, 2014, for $200 million.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Klout," read October 23, 2026
- Social Media Today, "Social Influence Platform Klout Will Shut Down at the End of the Month," May 11, 2018, read October 23, 2026
- Verisign, registry record for klout.com, read October 23, 2026, and our own request to klout.com that day
- TechCrunch, May 10, 2018, Fortune, March 26, 2014, and Klout's X account, as Google showed them on October 23, 2026
- Google results for "klout" and "what happened to klout," US, October 23, 2026 (our read)
- Google Ads Keyword Planner, worldwide, read October 23, 2026
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