We were pleased to read Matthew Rideout's post at his Professionally Social blog: “My Klout Is Bigger Than Your Klout – The truth about influence “measurement.” He points out that:
“...social media “measurement” tools are gaining in popularity... These tools claim to measure influence, or how influential a social media entity is to others. Each one has a unique ranking algorithm, but they all do one thing, they put a number on influence... There is a fundamental flaw with these systems, they measure outputs not outcomes. These influence scores will not necessarily correlate to real world business performance, or give any indication of whether or not social media is helping a business to accomplish any of its goals.”
He goes on to present a hypothetical example of social media-enabled business outcome that could not be detected by Klout or similar monitoring tools. Read the whole post here.
And if you are interested in Klout, read Katie Paine’s post “What is Klout really about?”
--WTP
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“Data will become the new soil in which our ideas will grow, and data whisperers will become the new messiahs.” 
Great comment, Bill. This gets to the heart of our industry's need for a very heavy dose of empiricism. I am all for innovations and trying new ideas. But if a score, index, or metric means anything, show us the proof.
Posted by: David Geddes | October 21, 2011 at 03:05 PM