To make Klout a useful destination, Klout is allowing more people to see its over 10K topic pages that show the top 10 influencers in that topic and the content influencers on each topic are discussing, LAUNCH has learned. Klout announced its plan for topic pages in mid-August [ see our story. ]

Klout users who opted into the topic page "perk" last month can preview the pages right now. Tweeting about today's launch can help you get access faster.

"This is a big step for us in turning Klout into more of a utility around search and discover instead of pure vanity of checking your score," CEO Joe Fernandez tells LAUNCH by email. "This is a really early version of where we plan to take this but it speaks to our belief that every person who creates content has influence. Our goal is just to...

Barely two-and-a-half years old, Node.js is designed to handle thousands of simultaneous requests in real time. If Twitter were built from scratch today, for example, the backend could be Node.js. This open-source language powers sites including Etsy, Uber and Yammer, and it's very well-suited to building massive multiplayer online games [ see our story on Node.js ].

The second annual Node Knockout, Aug. 27-29, gave developers exactly 48 hours to build a Node-based web app. The competition's 175 judges have until tomorrow, Sept. 6, to pick winners in seven categories -- including overall team and best solo project -- from the 177 entries. The masses pick the "most popular" winner.

The top prize at Node Knockout 2010 went to Swarmation, a multiplayer "pixel formation" game which is still up but hasn't gone anywhere.

The most popular entry from 2010 was...

The story CNN incorporated Google+ Hangouts into wasn't breaking international news -- fan reaction to soccer clubs' transfer deadline -- but it's a big vote of confidence for Google's video-conferencing technology.

The segment for CNN's show "World Sport" included viewpoints from soccer fans, one in Scotland and one in Malaysia. It appears their comments were edited from a Hangout a producer held before the show aired.

The next step, of course, will be Hangouts broadcast live. We'd love to see...

The White House plans to launch a tool so U.S. citizens can directly petition the Obama administration to take action on issues they care about -- as long as they have an email address and can get at least 5K signatures. Naturally, the administration wants people to use social media to get support for their petitions.

In a mass email, senior adviser to the president David Plouffe framed "We the People" as an initiative in line with the country's founding documents (the First Amendment guarantees the right to petition government, notes the official website ). To get you really excited, Plouffe writes, "President Obama will even answer a few himself."

Macon Phillips, the White House new media director, noted in a tweet that the system does not have a way to...

Wireless hifi system maker Sonos, best known for streaming music in multiple rooms, has hit 1M rooms worldwide, six years after shipping its first wireless music system and four years since the debut of the AppleTV -- which some called a Sonos-killer. In fact, except for AppleTV, Sonos plays well with pretty much every Apple product.

Sonos spokesperson Thomas Meyer tells LAUNCH that 55% of registrations are outside the United States. The number of Sonos households grew...

We can't imagine a better way to keep up with tweets around tonight's MTV Video Music Awards than this live tweet tracker. The top bar shows the timeline of #vma tweets, with the total in the top-right corner.

You have three ways to view what's happening.

Buzz [ shown above ] gives you a quick overview of who's being talked about most and lets you retweet/reply directly.

Paparazzi shows you which photos are getting...

You probably know your Klout score, and we bet you've compared your score to someone else's by typing in their Twitter handle on Klout's site. That's possible because tweets are public, and Klout builds profiles -- without explicit permission -- on public data.

As the Klout FAQ explains, "Klout collects public data in order to accurately measure influence. Users can control the data available to Klout by changing the privacy settings on individual networks. Klout will never access your private data unless we have explicit permission."

Even people with locked tweets have Klout scores and profiles. All the locked accounts we checked have the basic Klout score of 10, regardless of how many followers they have. This includes porn star Jenna Haze  [ @jenxstudios, 114K followers ] who is influential about music, photography and movies [ not sex? hmmm. ]

But Canada-based marketing expert and social media blogger Danny Brown argues in a recent post that Klout sucks because you have to opt out of their system rather than opt-in.

"No permission -- there you are, as bright as day online, with whatever score they deem you fit to have based on their perception of you," Danny writes.

He then notes, "I understand that by accepting the Terms of Service on the likes of Twitter, etc, your information can be shared. I’m not sold on that...

Launched just two weeks ago by the founders of Namesake, Turntable-for-video startup Chill has just added new avatars and the ability to fan a VJ.

Right now, you need at least 50 points to choose a monster avatar [ see above ] and 300 for a mask avatar.

When you fan a VJ, that person gets a notification, and...

Social media commentator Muhammad Saleem wrote in SocialBeat earlier this month that content-discovery site Digg had only five months of runway -- a statement he corrected in the article's comments and confirmed to LAUNCH.

"I had referenced this Techcrunch story in my post, however as a commenter pointed out, they raised more money, giving them a longer runway," Muhammad explained.

"In my response in the comments, I pointed out that he was correct, and I added that we must still take into account that Digg also has $1.5 million in outstanding debt."

Digg CEO Matt Williams, who joined the company about a year ago, told LAUNCH by email, "The numbers in the VentureBeat Guest Post are ...