Klout Struggles With Its Own Status As It Launches Klout Experts

Klout just announced the launch of Klout Experts, the company’s own play in the Q&A space.  According to Klout founder and CEO, Joe Fernandez, some 10% of search queries still don’t yield the answers people are looking for, which when you work it out, is more than one billion queries a month.  And Klout wants to solve that problem, so they have created Klout Experts and partnered with Microsoft Bing.

People who are searching on Bing and ask “What is the best digital SLR camera?” will see a Klout Experts answer at the top of the search results with that person’s recommendation.  How are the best answers chosen?  Good question.  Right now, it’s as determined by the Klout team, however, they plan to implement a user feedback/review system so people can determine/vote on the best possible answer.  Which I don’t necessarily get since you would think the person with the highest Klout score who has answered the question should show up, but they won’t — at least not automatically.

It’s important to note that Klout will be limiting answers to 300 characters (I bet that has a lot to do with not overtaking the search results page), and it’s seeking more of a “what” or “which one” or “where” over a “why.”  This means Klout Experts will be answering questions more along the lines of “What’s a great place to go in New York on a sunny day?” and less “Why is the sky blue?”

This is an important move for Klout, as the company is currently struggling with ways to get people to interact on its site to get more brands onboard with the whole Klout score thing.  I personally have pretty much given up on my Klout score — not because it’s bad, but because there is currently no benefit to caring.  I have no real incentive to care about it — the perks aren’t great, and they rarely, if ever translate over into the real world.  As I previously wrote, does your Klout score really matter?  And the answer today is: outside of bragging to your friends, no, it really doesn’t.

We’ll see if Klout Experts can help boost Klout’s own status.