Users of the social influence ranking service Klout can now see how their local checkins impact their overall social reach, thanks to an integration with Foursquare.
This marks the first time Klout has used explicitly location-focused data as a factor in its social influence scoring system. Previously, only data from your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts were used to calculate your Klout Score. With this update, users can get an idea of what their social media influence is in and around the places they frequent in the real world, rather than just on the social Web at large.
There are several different Foursquare data points that could theoretically have an impact on one’s score, including number of friends, total badges and frequency of their check-ins. To start, Klout seems to be focusing on the tips that users leave at different venues on Foursquare.
“The importance of tips for a venue cannot be underestimated, as the data shows, tips are loved by users and change what customers want,” reads a post on the Klout company blog.
More than 80% of active Foursquare users have left a tip at a location at one point and over 2/3 of them post them regularly, according to Klout. Starting today, those tips will play a role in people’s scores, which Klout has said are not at risk of decreasing when people connect their Foursquare accounts. In other words, people won’t be penalized if they’re not particularly established Foursquare users, but connecting their account to Klout can help raise their overall score.
Integration with Foursquare can currently be turned on from the Klout dashboard, but the company says it will take up to 72 hours for that data to be reflected in one’s score.
Users can also now connect their YouTube accounts to Klout and Google Plus integration is in the works.
