Today marks the culmination of something I've been talking about for a long time. If you remember from my last blog post Revolutionary New Social Ads from Facebook, I talked about how the new social ads from Facebook were another step in solidifying the value of being influential (aka popular) in the social media ecosystem. My logic was that by showing people which of their friends liked certain brands, you could over time see who's "likes" where more influential to their friends tastes. I was pondering aloud(and hopefully not to myself) what the implications will be for knowing which people produce more concrete marketing value for brands. I'd like to thank the good people over at GILT for not wasting a moment of my time.
Before you get too excited I'll admit they didn't answer my question about social Facebook ad influencers specifically, but did make a significant statement about the value of being an online taste-maker as a whole. What exactly did they say to cool kids everywhere? "Your opinion is worth money, so here's a check". This week Gilt will give out discounts solely based on its member's Klout scores. For those unfamiliar, Klout is a startup from San Francisco that quantifies user's online influence from 0 to 100 on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin and Foursquare. My Klout score, for example, is 46. According to Gilt that means I am eligible for a 40% discount worth up to $50! If you think that's nifty consider users with scores 81-100 get a 100% discount! It will be interesting to see how this experiment unfolds and I for one am excited (provided I remain "cool" enough for $50 dollar discounts).
