Klout’s first acquisition
Influence measuring site, Klout allows users to “track the impact of their opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph” and “identifies influencers and provides tools for influencers to monitor their influence.” Klout CEO, Joe Fernandez was named in the 2011 Genius50 Power Moves and the company was named on the 60 Genius Brands to Watch in 2012 list.
After funding to the tune of $40 million, the company has made their first acquisition, having snapped up Blockboard which Klout said in a statement, has built ““an amazing local-mobile app” designed to connect neighbors for building communities through technology. Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.
Blockboard is similar to Patch by AOL in that the platform allows users to discuss local news from a neighborhood bbq to a new sports team franchise in town. Blockboard explains the connection between the two companies, “What’s influence? It’s the ability to drive action. Just like in the online world, our local communities are filled with influential people who know the answers to our questions, who have opinions that we value, and who give advice that we follow. The challenge often lies in finding and connecting with these people in the first place.”
Blockboard says Klout “built the leading platform for measuring and understanding influence on the Web,” and notes that Klout will now be expanding “that system into local communities, mobile devices, and other new contexts” with Blockboard’s resources, platform and and expertise, as all Blockboard staff have been brought on to Klout, both of which are in San Francisco.
Klout is continuing to work toward integrating scores for Tumblr, Blogger, Instagram, YouTube, WordPress.com, Flickr, and Last.fm as they work toward better accuracy of scoring online influence. It is rumored that eventually, Quora, Yelp, Posterous, Livefyre, Disqus, and bit.ly will be added, and we would love to see them be the first to score the Pinterest ecosystem which is still much like the wild west. We anticipate the perks program will also be improved this year, especially since that is their revenue source.
