A not so useful perk

I like Klout. I think it clearly epitomises the state of the current web, with the significant incorporation of metrics for individual interactions. Metrics that have become a measure for social performance, and in some ways, a vanity score. Klout is deeply connected with what the web demands from us that makes it the powerful tool that it is today: information. As you interact with social media you upload information onto the web, you're monitored and awarded a score for your performance. But because you want to perform better and score higher, you then upload more information and interact more, which in turn gives you a better score and rewards or perks. And the cycle goes on and on.

The same dynamic can clearly be seen in searches. If you can find a result on Google, for any word you can imagine, it is mainly due to the fact that information was uploaded by millions of companies and people like me who write blog posts like this one. The uploading of that information is in turn fuelled by the demands and metrics of SEO practices that ask for more optimised content to rank better in the result pages.

What companies and advertisers do with the data they get from our social interactions is to collate it as knowledge to use to target consumers more accurately, like the email I recently received form Klout shows: 

The email announced that I had received a perk. That's great, I like perks. Nevertheless, although I appreciate being labelled as a 'key influencer', my Klout score doesn't reflect that. As for today my score is 27 and I am labelled as a mere 'Explorer', which makes perfect sense since I'm not very active on Twitter. Anyway, out of curiosity, I decided to 'claim my perk' and this is what I saw next:

 
The perk I was awarded was an Axe Hair product. It all seemed perfectly well if it wasn't for the fact that I am bald. So the perk wasn’t really one for me. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm relaxed about my condition, instead of seeing it as a perk, I could have taken the email as a bad joke or felt like if I was being bullied.

But don’t get me wrong, as I said I like Klout. It's just that this little commercial misunderstanding is a great example of how today's highly praised automatisation can have its flaws. It shows that no matter how much information about myself I have uploaded on all the social media channels I use, in the form of videos I share or things I say, I am still not 'there'. My baldness, my insecurities, my vulnerabilities, my motivations to 'like' something or buy a product are still difficult to decipher by algorithms and other types of technological practices and I still cannot be properly 'known' as a person. In today's digital, social and interactive media automatisation, labels and generalisations collide with feelings, life experiences and human complexities. And that is when commercial actions can have undesired results, for the marketer and for the consumer.

I think identity and consumer behaviour are still underestimated in today's digital landscape. Technical advances don't let technocrats see the very thing that hasn't changed: human nature. The people at Klout know this very well when they offer users a way to measure their social influence, which is something we do online and offline, everywhere, everytime and by different means. But the problem is, as always, the urge for 'monetisation', and that is when you start giving hair products to bald people.

Klout is a very clever idea. And I like it because just as it’s amazing features are a faithful representation of the wonders of the Internet today, so they are its mistakes. These mistakes also say a lot about the flaws of today's interactive media and the overrated expectations that companies, marketers, consumers and users have about technology.