Finding Social Media's Most Influential Influencers

Marketers have long mined data from social networks for “influencers,” people whose favorable tweets and posts can boost product sales. The most successful tool available has been Klout, which launched in 2008 with investments from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and other venture capital firms, and whose clients include Walt Disney, Procter & Gamble, and Audi. It assigns influencers a score based on more than 400 data points, such as their job title on LinkedIn and number of Facebook friends. Recently, Chevrolet gave about 900 people with a Klout score of more than 50 a free three-day rental of the Chevy Volt, a move that resulted in more than 46,000 tweets and more than 20.7 million blog posts, most of them favorable, about the electric car.

Now two startups in Portland, Ore., are challenging Klout. Launched in early October, Tellagence and Little Bird say that they also help businesses zero in on social influencers, but in a more targeted way. These services identify people who are most likely to take active steps to influence consumers. “The Klout approach confuses influence and popularity,” says Susan Etlinger, an analyst at researcher Altimeter Group. Lynn Fox, Klout’s head of communication, says that the company’s approach provides the most accurate measure available. “Every day, we process over 12 billion data points,” she says. “To our knowledge, no other influence model comes close to processing data at this scale.”