Topsy.com VS Klout.com

I’ve spent a lot of time working on my mashup codebase, more than I intended. I’m not a software developer anymore but I can fool people online if I can keep my distaste for PHP under control. I’ve made changes to just about every class and added support for more APIs, not just film and music ones. I added support for searching the Wikipedia and for Topsy and Klout.

Now neither Topsy nor Klout can be used by the general public let alone by my PHP code. Clout stopped being a standalone service and before that Topsy was bought by Apple computers and now you have to use Twitter or Google or one of these alternatives.

So why should you read a post about two APIs you didn’t use and can no longer use. More importantly why in 2019 am I editing this eight year old blog post. I’m doing it because I don’t have a job and want one so I’m trying to improve the Quality of my blog. As to why you should keep reading, morbid curiosity maybe.

Should I use Klout?

Klout is much more well known in the corner of the Twitterverse that is Vancouver. People here know their Klout scores, at least those that use Twitter a lot do. I still think Klout needs to include other services and measures to determine authority and expertise. Even then real people reading what you actually say will never be replaced. One thing Klout’s API doesn’t support is telling you who is an expert on a given subject. This is a bit odd because they do that all the time on their own home page. They have the capability, but don’t want others to have it. Some people have undoubtedly made their own rankings as you can get the Klout Score for any Twitter account.

Or should I use Topsy?

Topsy also has an API, it doesn’t even need a key to be used. They have no problem telling you who they consider to be the number one online expert in a given subject, or at least the person who tweets the most about it.

Why not use both?

I ended up using both services in my random film mashup. Now in 2019 my mashup code suffers from too many APIs changing their policies or going out of business like Klout and Topsy.

What about Kred?

Another company that will rank your online influence is Kred, so I finally broke down and signed up for that service. There are things I like better about Kred than Klout and I haven’t heard mBlast or TweetLevel mentioned again since I blogged about them. All these algorithms are still flawed as they don’t measure influence outside of the easy to measure social networks for the most part aka: Twitter and Facebook. Google+ likes to fancy themselves as in third, but some statisticians think Pinterest may actually be in third. And in 2019 Pinterest IPO’ed while Google+ has gone the way of Klout and Topsy.

Klout and Kred are probably waiting for Pinterest to release an official API. Advertisers and corporations who want to exploit the popularity of some of the newer more specialized social networks are also waiting. If you have thoughts on analytics, social networking, and influencer marketing you can leave a comment below.

This entry was originaly posted on May 9th, 2011, it was last edited on April 26th, 2019 and is filed under: Technology and tagged: Influence, Klout, Kred, Popularity, Topsy.