Klout
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Klout was a website and mobile app that used social media analytics to rate users' online social influence via the 'Klout Score', a number from 1 to 100. It was launched in August 2008 by founders Joe Fernandez and Binh Tran in San Francisco, measuring users' social media network size and how their content drove engagement. It was acquired by Lithium Technologies in March 2014 in a deal valued at nearly $200 million.
02 / Klout FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Klout closed as a standalone service that was not aligned with owner Lithium Technologies' long-term strategy, as CEO Pete Hess said; the novelty of a single social-influence score had worn off as the social media landscape consolidated; and the shutdown coincided with the May 25, 2018 GDPR enforcement deadline, when data-hungry scoring services faced new scrutiny.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Klout was founded.
- Product or service closed
Klout closed the recorded product or service.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
On May 10, 2018 Klout announced via Twitter and a blog post that it would shut down the Klout website and the Klout Score on May 25, 2018.
- 02
Lithium Technologies CEO Pete Hess told customers the acquisition had given Lithium valuable AI and machine learning capabilities, and that it planned a new social impact scoring methodology based on Twitter.
- 03
The service closed on May 25, 2018 - the same day the EU's General Data Protection Regulation came into force.
- 04
No audited loss figure was disclosed.