Klout's new scoring algorithm -- which the company tried to prepare users for a week ago -- already has influential people expressing frustration.

"Very unhappy with this change," Timothy Whalin, a UX designer, commented on Klout's blog post announcing the change. "My score went from 73 down to 53. 20 point drop. I've been working for months to increase my Klout score. Please fix this."

Klout Marketing Manager Megan Berry tells LAUNCH via email that "the majority of users saw either no drop or an increase."

Klout did seek to soften the blow: "In fact, some of our Scores here at the Klout HQ will drop -- our goal is accuracy above all else," Ash Rust, director of ranking, wrote on the Klout blog. "We believe our users will be pleased with the improvements we’ve made. Below is a distribution of the Score changes. You’ll note large decreases in Score are rare."

Another user, Mike Schinkel, a publisher at PM-Sherpa.com, writes that Klout should not have recalculated past data.

"Before the change everything I was doing was making the score go up over the past month," Mike wrote in the comments on the Klout blog "So, what bothers me is Klout has guided me to take action to improve my score yet now they show others that my past actions mean I am steadily loosing 'influence.'"

A Klout moderator responded that Mike should think of it as similar to when Google changes its algorithm.

"Their [Google's] goal is always to measure influence as accurately as possible," Klout writes on the blog. "Reaching this goal will involve a constant evolution and each step makes us a more accurate gauge."

To help you understand why your score changed, Klout now shows you which subscore and people in your network caused those changes. For instance, @LAUNCH's score dropped slightly because our "immediate influence network" no longer includes certain people and because influencers in our network themselves lost influence.

What happened to your Klout score? Did it go up or down? Discuss below in the comments.

CONTACTS & LINKS

Klout
Website: http://www.Klout.com/
Blog: corp.Klout.com/blog/
Twitter: @Klout

Joe Fernandez, CEO
Twitter: @JoeFernandez
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/112444182697680730473

Ash Rust, Ranking Director
Twitter: @ashrust
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashrust
Blog: http://ashrust.com/

LAUNCH Blog