What Happened to Klout?

For nearly a decade, Klout tried to answer a question that had never been asked before: how influential are you on the internet? The San Francisco startup assigned every social media user a score between 1 and 100, turning online popularity into a single number. That number got people upgraded at hotels, gave them free products, and even affected hiring decisions. Then on May 25, 2018, Klout went dark forever.

Quick Answer: Klout shut down on May 25, 2018, exactly the same day the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect. Lithium Technologies, which had acquired Klout for approximately $200 million in 2014, stated that Klout "as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy." The timing was not a coincidence. GDPR made Klout's model of harvesting public social data without explicit consent legally risky across Europe, and the platform had been declining in relevance for years.

The Origin Story: A Wired Jaw and a Big Idea

Klout's founding story reads like Silicon Valley folklore. In 2007, Joe Fernandez had jaw surgery that required his mouth to be wired shut for three months. Unable to speak, he turned to Facebook and Twitter to stay connected with friends and family.

During those three months of forced silence, Fernandez became obsessed with social media dynamics. He noticed that some people could post something and get dozens of responses, while others shouted into the void. He started thinking about influence as something measurable.

"Word of mouth was measurable," Fernandez later said about his realization. By 2008, he had the first version of Klout running. He built it the old-fashioned way: sleeping on couches, burning through savings, and convincing a handful of engineers to join a company with zero revenue.

Klout officially launched on December 24, 2008. The pitch was simple: connect your social media accounts, and Klout would analyze your activity to generate a single number representing your online influence.

How the Klout Score Actually Worked

The Klout Score measured influence on a scale of 1 to 100. It pulled data from multiple social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, and even Wikipedia.

The Algorithm

Klout's scoring algorithm considered over 400 different signals, including:

How many people you reached with your posts
How often your content was shared, retweeted, or liked
The influence level of the people engaging with you
How consistently you posted
Whether you had a Wikipedia page (added later)
Your professional background on LinkedIn

The algorithm evolved significantly over the years. Early versions relied heavily on Twitter follower counts, which meant that accounts with millions of bot followers could game the system easily.

What Different Scores Meant

Score Range	What It Meant	Example
1-20	Minimal online presence	Inactive accounts
21-40	Average social media user	Most everyday users
41-60	Growing influence	Active bloggers, local personalities
61-80	Significant reach	Industry experts, minor celebrities
81-100	Major influencer	Politicians, A-list celebrities, viral creators

At its peak, Klout had roughly 620 million profiles scored across social networks, with about 20 million active registered users.

"Bieber-gate" and the Credibility Problem

The most damaging controversy in Klout's history involved a teenager from Canada. For months, Justin Bieber held a perfect Klout Score of 100. Barack Obama, the sitting President of the United States, scored lower.

Think about that for a moment. The algorithm determined that a pop star with a passionate teenage fanbase was more influential than the leader of the free world.

The situation became known informally as "Bieber-gate," and it was covered extensively by mainstream media. The absurdity of the comparison highlighted a fundamental flaw: Klout was measuring social media engagement, not real-world influence. Obama could authorize military operations. Bieber could trend on Twitter. The algorithm treated the latter as more significant.

Klout responded by overhauling its algorithm in August 2012, expanding from 100 metrics to over 400. The changes incorporated real-world signals like Wikipedia presence and LinkedIn job titles. After the update, Obama's score jumped to 99 while Bieber dropped to 91.

But the damage to Klout's credibility was lasting. People had seen behind the curtain, and what they found was a system that could be gamed by anyone with enough retweets.

The Klout Perks Program: Free Stuff for Being Popular

In 2010, Klout launched what many considered its most clever innovation: Klout Perks. The idea was straightforward. Brands would give free products and experiences to people with high Klout Scores, betting that influential users would post about those products organically.

How Perks Worked

Brands offered products to Klout users above certain score thresholds. If your score qualified, you could claim the perk. Notable examples included:

Chevrolet loaned 2012 Sonic cars for three days to users with Klout Scores above 35
Audi offered test drives of the A8 sedan to high-scoring users
Red Bull sent cases of their energy drinks
Spotify gave premium subscriptions
American Airlines upgraded passengers who checked in on Foursquare with high Klout Scores
Disney gave early movie screenings
The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas upgraded hotel rooms based on Klout Scores

The Perks program was Klout's best argument for its own existence. It turned an abstract number into tangible value. If your Klout Score could get you a hotel upgrade, then suddenly caring about that number made sense.

When Perks Went Wrong

The program also created uncomfortable situations. Stories circulated of people being denied hotel upgrades or VIP access because their Klout Score was too low. Job recruiters reportedly checked candidates' Klout Scores during hiring processes. Airlines seated passengers differently based on scores.

Author John Scalzi wrote a widely shared critique accusing Klout of creating "status anxiety" by reducing human relationships to a number. A Wired article called Klout Scores "the digital equivalent of a credit rating for your social life."

Klout quietly shut down the Perks program in October 2015, three years before the platform itself died.

The $200 Million Acquisition by Lithium Technologies

In March 2014, Lithium Technologies acquired Klout for approximately $200 million. The deal seemed massive for a company that had never figured out a clear revenue model beyond brand partnerships.

Why Lithium Bought Klout

Lithium was a customer engagement software company based in San Francisco. They wanted Klout's AI and machine learning capabilities, particularly its ability to analyze social media data and identify influential users. Lithium's CEO Rob Tarkoff called the acquisition a way to help brands "identify the right people, at the right time, to amplify positive brand experiences."

What Happened After the Acquisition

After the acquisition, Klout's standalone product received less attention. Joe Fernandez left the company. Most of Klout's technology was folded into Lithium's enterprise products, serving behind the scenes rather than as a consumer-facing tool.

Lithium CEO Peter Hess would later say that Klout "as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy." The company valued Klout's AI. It didn't value Klout the website.

What Joe Fernandez Did Next

After leaving Klout, Joe Fernandez founded Joymode, a peer-to-peer rental platform for experiences and equipment. In retrospect, he was remarkably candid about what went wrong. In a Substack post titled "How to go from being a super hot company to lucky to get acquired in less than 24 months," Fernandez detailed how Klout's fortunes changed rapidly as the company struggled to find product-market fit beyond the Klout Score.

The GDPR Kill Shot

Klout died on May 25, 2018. That date was not random. It was the exact day the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation took effect.

Why GDPR Was Fatal for Klout

GDPR fundamentally changed how companies could collect and process personal data about European citizens. The law required:

Explicit consent before collecting personal data
Clear explanations of how data would be used
The right for users to request deletion of their data
Significant penalties for non-compliance (up to 4% of global revenue)

Klout's entire business model depended on scraping public social media data without explicit user consent. The company scored 620 million profiles, the vast majority of whom had never signed up for Klout or agreed to be rated. Under GDPR, continuing this practice for European users would have required consent from every single person being scored.

As Slate reported at the time: "Klout is dead, just in time for Europe's GDPR privacy law. That's not a coincidence."

The Official Statement

Lithium's spokesperson told TechCrunch: "The upcoming deadline for GDPR implementation simply expedited our plans to sunset Klout." This careful wording confirmed what many suspected: GDPR didn't kill Klout on its own, but it accelerated a death that was already in progress.

Timeline: The Complete History of Klout

Date	Event
2007	Joe Fernandez has jaw surgery, becomes obsessed with measuring online influence
December 2008	Klout launches
2010	Klout Perks program begins
2011	"Bieber-gate": Justin Bieber scores 100, Obama scores lower
2011	Chevrolet loans cars to users with Klout Scores above 35
August 2012	Major algorithm overhaul expands to 400+ metrics; Obama overtakes Bieber
March 2014	Lithium Technologies acquires Klout for approximately $200 million
October 2015	Klout Perks program discontinued
May 10, 2018	Klout announces it will shut down
May 25, 2018	Klout permanently shuts down (same day GDPR takes effect)

Why Klout Failed: The Three Core Problems

1. The Score Was Fundamentally Flawed

Reducing human influence to a single number was always going to be problematic. Influence is contextual. A food blogger with 10,000 followers might have more influence over restaurant choices than a celebrity with 10 million followers. Klout couldn't capture that nuance.

The score was also gameable. People formed "Klout clubs" where they would systematically retweet and like each other's content to inflate scores. Businesses sold Klout Score boosting services. The number was supposed to measure authentic influence, but it often measured who was best at gaming the system.

2. No Sustainable Revenue Model

Klout never figured out how to make consistent money. The Perks program was expensive to run and depended on brand partnerships that fluctuated. The company charged some businesses for access to its data and analytics, but it never built a subscription product that scaled.

When Lithium acquired Klout, the technology was worth $200 million. The standalone business was not.

3. People Hated Being Scored

There's a deep psychological discomfort in being assigned a public number that rates your social worth. People with low scores felt judged. People with high scores felt pressure to maintain them. And people who didn't sign up for Klout felt violated when they discovered they'd been scored without consent.

CNN Money ran a piece asking whether Klout was creating a "social media caste system." The New Yorker published an essay about the narcissism of influence scoring. The cultural backlash was real and persistent.

Klout's Lasting Impact on Social Media

Despite its failure as a business, Klout changed how the industry thinks about influence.

What Klout Got Right

Klout was ahead of its time in several ways. The concept of "influencer marketing" barely existed when Klout launched. The company essentially created the framework that brands now use to identify and partner with social media influencers.

Today, every major social platform has built-in analytics. Instagram shows reach and engagement rates. YouTube provides detailed audience demographics. TikTok's Creator Marketplace connects brands with influencers based on data. These tools owe a conceptual debt to Klout's attempt to quantify influence.

What Replaced Klout

No single product has replaced Klout's consumer-facing score. Instead, the market fragmented:

Platform-native analytics give creators their own data
Influencer marketing platforms like CreatorIQ and Upfluence score influencers for brand partnerships
Social listening tools like Brandwatch track influence in specific conversations
Individual metrics (follower counts, engagement rates, subscriber numbers) serve as informal influence indicators

The dream of a single universal influence score died with Klout. The industry decided that influence is too complex for one number.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Klout shut down?

Klout shut down permanently on May 25, 2018. This was the same day the European Union's GDPR privacy regulation took effect. Lithium Technologies, which acquired Klout in 2014, stated that GDPR "expedited our plans to sunset Klout."

What was a good Klout Score?

Klout Scores ranged from 1 to 100. The average user scored around 40. Scores above 60 were considered significant, and scores above 80 indicated major influencers. Justin Bieber famously held a perfect 100, while Barack Obama scored in the mid-90s.

How much was Klout worth when it was acquired?

Lithium Technologies acquired Klout in March 2014 for approximately $200 million. At its peak, Klout had about 20 million active users and scored over 620 million social media profiles.

Did Klout actually measure real influence?

Not reliably. Klout measured social media engagement, which is only one dimension of influence. The system could be gamed through coordinated retweeting and liking, and it famously scored Justin Bieber as more influential than President Obama. The algorithm improved over time but never fully solved the problem of distinguishing genuine influence from manufactured engagement.

Why did GDPR kill Klout?

GDPR required explicit consent before processing personal data of European citizens. Klout scored hundreds of millions of people who never signed up for the service, making compliance extremely difficult. Rather than overhaul its entire data collection model, Lithium chose to shut Klout down.

What happened to Joe Fernandez after Klout?

Joe Fernandez, Klout's founder, left the company after the Lithium acquisition. He went on to found Joymode, a peer-to-peer rental marketplace. Fernandez has been candid about Klout's challenges, writing publicly about how the company went "from being a super hot company to lucky to get acquired."

Can I still check my Klout Score?

No. Klout was permanently shut down on May 25, 2018. All user data was deleted. There is no way to access historical Klout Scores, and any website claiming to offer Klout Scores is not affiliated with the original service.

Did employers really check Klout Scores?

Yes. During Klout's peak years (2011 to 2014), some recruiters and hiring managers referenced Klout Scores when evaluating candidates for marketing, PR, and social media positions. This practice was controversial and contributed to the cultural backlash against the platform.

The Lesson from Klout's Demise

Klout's story is a cautionary tale about building a business on someone else's data. The company scraped social media platforms to generate its scores, depending on continued access to APIs that those platforms controlled. When privacy regulations tightened and the parent company lost interest, there was nothing left to sustain the product.

The broader lesson is about the limits of reducing complex human behavior to simple metrics. Influence is real, but it resists easy quantification. Klout tried to turn something inherently messy into a clean number, and the internet rejected the premise.

Today, the word "Klout" has faded from everyday conversation. But the questions the company raised about influence, measurement, and online reputation remain as relevant as ever. Every time a brand checks an influencer's engagement rate before signing a deal, they're working in a framework that Klout helped build.

The company failed. The idea survived.

Sources:

What Happened to Klout? The $200 Million Rise and Fall of Social Influence Scoring