Twitter Klout of Development Folk

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We were pleased at Aid Watch to discover Klout, an online Twitter “influence” scorecard. Could this help us settle some scores left over from the Twitter War we just had? We plan to use this as a rigorous new metric with which we will evaluate our efficacy in aid criticism and progress towards achieving our Meme Development Goals (MDGs), which were arbitrarily and haphazardly made up designed at the 2011 Laura-Freschi-and-Vivek-Nemana-Sitting-In-the-DRI-Office Summit (2011 LFVNSIDRIO Summit). Klout employs such measures as followers, list memberships and retweets to present a comprehensive global metric of Twitter and social media effectiveness. Table 1 lists the Klout scores of various thought leaders in development:

Twitter Handle Klout Score
justinbieber 100
nickkristof 85
ONECampaign 71
viewfromthecave 68
bill_easterly 65
dambisamoyo 61
m_clem 61
paul_hewson 60
earthinstitute 58
jeffdsachs 54
aidwatch 53
endofpoverty 49
mcarthur 48
vnemana 10

We regret the low positioning of Aid Watch, with a Klout score of 53. This fact is partially – but not entirely – offset by Bill Easterly’s higher placement of 65. (Please don’t tell him that @viewfromthecave is way higher).

Nevertheless, Aid Watch will implement a 4-point comprehensive plan of reform to achieve 3 indicators on the way to the MDGs: 1) enhance our social media influence 2) improve our Klout metric and 3) elevate progress towards the MDGs:

  • Intensive Social Mediafication: We will increase investment in our twitter account in order to promote intensive tweeting in an effort to “shock” the Klout metric into growth
  • Retweet incentivizing: Drawing upon pledged support from imaginary donors, Aid Watch will offer a free multicolor wristband to anyone who retweets our tweets
  • Aggressive List Creation: We will establish an independent commission to create and monitor Twitter lists in which Aid Watch may claim membership
  • Randomized experiments on tweets: Tweets will be subjects to RCTs in which the popularity-potential of tweets is rigorously assessed

On a side note, Vivek Nemana’s disappointingly low Klout score of 10 has elicited reactions including “angst,” “shame,” and “humiliation.” We recommend an intensive “shock therapy” regiment of savvy Tweets and follower-count obsession in order for Vivek to escape the Klout trap.