Shedding Light on Klout's Black Box: An Interview with Klout Founder Joe Fernandez

As you may or may not recall, I recently posted a piece that examined the Klout scores of dead celebrities. A few hours later, I got a tweet from the site’s creator, Joe Fernandez:

@danstuckey Only thing I am sad about is that 2pac doesn’t have more Klout. Happy to chat sometime. +K thuglife.

— Joe Fernandez (@JoeFernandez) June 23, 2012

After 4th of July, and about 3 weeks of e-mail tag, we finally got it together last week to have that chat. Between reunions in Iowa, trying to create a fully transparent Klout.com, and investing in the Y-Combinator-backed image-sharing company, Chutes, he’s become a pretty busy dude, so my balls aren’t completely busted from waiting. (I like to think I’m influential about patience.) From surgery stories to black boxes and transparency, boxing dreams and Nevada beginnings, here’s how the dialog with Joe went:

Are you originally from Iowa?

No, I’m not, I’ve never lived there. I grew up in Las Vegas; I have a bunch of family there (Iowa).

In Vegas or Henderson?

I grew up in Vegas.

Oh, wow.

Kinda old school Vegas, like right off the strip. I lived where Treasure Island is, right behind there.

What were you doing before Klout?

I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I’ve always been into engineering and computer nerd stuff, so I co-founded a company in the education space, and we built a system that 85% of the school districts in the U.S. use to test kids for learning disabilities. I also helped found a company in real estate, basically if you were looking at Zillow or Trulia and wanted information about a neighborhood or city, it would tell you everything you needed to know.

Where did you first get the idea for Klout?

Late 2007, living in New York, I had surgery and my jaw was wired shut for three months.

Mhm?

So, during that time, I had to completely rely on Twitter and Facebook to communicate. Even my mom couldn’t understand anything I was trying to say. It really changed the way I looked at the platform. It was amazing for me, the idea that the people who trusted me the most: I could tell them my opinion on anything — instantly from my phone — and the data was there to measure it, so I got really obsessed with this idea, and created Klout. I don’t know, it might have been the drugs, the pain relievers, but the idea was if I could help every person understand how influential they were online, that it would be something interesting if not powerful.

Was it Vicodin? I remember taking Vicodin after having my teeth pulled once and getting really obsessed with one of those weird online role playing games.

I don’t even remember what it was, it was liquid though because I couldn’t chew, because my jaw was wired shut. So it had to be a liquid. It was pretty gross stuff, but it worked.

Sounds heavenly, despite the apparatus on your jaw and the surgery, it sounds nice. Your platform really reminds me of credit scores, I used to work in credit counseling and repair when I lived in Northern California. I was wondering if it ever had anything to do with that, or if that ever crossed your mind when developing it?

The idea that Klout is your social credit score, is something I’ve heard people say. I can see the relevance there. The idea that identity and personal brand — just who you are online, your reputation, all of these things just matter a lot. The idea that your reputation and influence matter as much as your bank account is a pretty amazing thing in my mind.

Klout is very centered around influence, who might you say would be the most influential person in your life?

In my life?

In real life and then also on the Internet.

I just got married two months ago, so the wife now, is pretty influential. Then there’s the team here at Klout, the teams here are extremely influential to me. I spend a ridiculous amount of time with them. I pay a lot of attention to other entrepreneurs, and I really like Drew Houston, he’s the founder of DropBox, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. A lot of these guys definitely influence me a lot.

—

Anybody classic?

Obama has an extremely high Klout score, and is somebody I pay attention to, but also, some of the celebrities that I wish tweeted more. Kanye and his Through the Wire is inspirational.

People are wondering why you’re still in beta, and I’m sure there are probably things you like to change about your black box. I was wondering if that is something that is constantly developing, or you guys are changing its algorithm.

It’s constantly evolving. The main reason it’s evolving is because we don’t want it to be a ‘black box.’ We want it to be transparent, we want people to understand their score, we want people to feel and trust, and trust why their score is changing. The current incarnation of the site in terms of transparency isn’t there, but we have some big changes coming. It’s a constant work in progress. So, while we’re going through that process is why we’re still in beta, but I’m definitely excited about the progress we’re making.

What’s the atmosphere around the office about beta? Anybody anxious about seeing it come out of beta?

I think a lot of people here take pride in their work and have passion for the challenge we have. The challenge is that everyday you have more people creating more data on more networks. So when you think about the fact that we’re looking at data from Twitter and Facebook and FourSquare and Instagram and Google Plus and all these places; every single one of those places is growing everyday with more people, and then those people create more content. To make sense of that is a huge, huge undertaking. Those are all billion-dollar-companies with billion-dollar-resources, and were still a small team, trying to do this. We know it’s a big challenge and we know we’re really early in the process, but there is a hunger to really build something amazing. People are here really early and really late and all weekend, and it’s hard to imagine a more passionate team about this challenge.

Have any of your friends ever asked you to doctor their Klout score?

Especially here, in San Francisco, and when I visit New York, I feel like I can’t go to any event without dozens of people asking me to fix their Klout score.

Is that possible?

No, if it was I would have the highest Klout score, and I definitely don’t, so it’s really a data based system. It’s all about the content you create, and how people react to it.

With people being able to buy Twitter followers, buy Facebook friends, does that screw with your system?

We definitely pay attention to that kind of stuff, but we don’t really care how many followers you have, we don’t really care how many Facebook friends. We care about, how do people react.

Like retweets, and comments, and shares?

Yeah, and then how influential are those people. Not the spam-porn-followers who ignore everything you say, they’d actually be bad for your score.

What about SoundCloud?

I love SoundCloud, and my hope is as we continue to mature on our product, that we’ll have thousands and thousands of partners, the more the better.

Are there any new functions or services coming into Klout?

Yea, we actually have a pretty big update coming in the next couple weeks, with a big step towards transparency around understanding your Klout score. So, a whole new way to interact with your Klout score.

My friend Flora wanted to ask what other elements besides social media interactions do you think would help evaluate someone’s level of influence online? Are there ways that you’ve thought of that are not quantifiable?

Well I’ve definitely thought about this, like an offline influence. How can we start addressing offline influence. Even if you’ve been mentioned in Vice, that should impact your Klout score. Or you’ve been on TV or are a DP for a record label. Even if you’re not on Twitter, it probably means you’re pretty influential. All those are things we hope to take into account at some point.

Wow. Do you think the Human Centipede was really just about social media?

It could be. I haven’t thought about it in that way. Some days it feels like it.

If you were going to start a company tomorrow that wasn’t a tech company, what would it be?

Growing up in Vegas, I loved boxing, the sport of boxing. My dad’s from Cuba, so boxing is a big deal. I don’t think I would be a professional fighter, but if I could be like a promoter or something, that would be kinda cool.

Is this related in anyway to your jaw surgery?

No, unfortunately I wish I had a cool story, but nothing cool happened.

Well, that about does it. Thanks for your time, Joe.

Sure. And in a couple of weeks, we’re going to be launching a bunch of new stuff, so it should be pretty cool.

Reach this writer at @danstuckey or mail@danstuckey.com.
Image courtesy of Klout

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• Thank You Klout.com For Giving My Life Meaning