Great news today about our portfolio company Klout: TechCrunch reports that the company is getting a strategic investment from Microsoft and Klout will have a two-way data relationship with the Bing search engine.
This means you’ll see Klout scores in Bing results, and Klout will use Bing data in determining Klout scores. For example, when people search for you in Bing, your Klout score will go up.
The reason Klout was able to get a deal like this done is because they have a lot (a whole lot) of data on people. This data, along with the fact that they remain a neutral party working with all the giants, allows them to create a sort of Page Rank that tells others how influental you are in given areas.
See my post from August with more thoughts on why we invested.
When you forget all the weird perks people get for having a high Klout score and the sometime hilarious errors that the young service sometimes makes in assigning Klout, you can start to see the real power of the service. Big, big data. And useful.
The easiest way to see this yourself? Download the Klout for Twitter Chrome extension and see people’s Klout score as you interact with them.
Congrats to Klout and Microsoft. This is a good partnership.
See the Klout blog for more.
Uncrunched 