Why The Lithium Deal Highlights Klout’s Failings, But Is Good News for Influence Marketing

In the last couple of days, it was announced that social customer experience company Lithium Technologies would be acquiring social scoring platform Klout for a figure reputed to be around $100 million.

If the deal goes through, it’ll be the close of a five year journey for Klout since its inception – a journey that saw it initially praised as a conduit to determine online influence, and then berated for various missteps that included profiling minors, privacy concerns, and questions around it...