没有Klout，生活更美好

I am the least influential person I know. Less so than all of my colleagues, friends and acquaintances. Less so even than my children.

我是我所认识的人中最没有影响力的人，不如我的所有同事、朋友和熟人，连我的孩子都不如。

This is on the strength of Klout scores, which rate our importance on social networks on a scale of one to 100. My Klout turns out to be a mere 10 – which compares with an infuriating 68 for my lifelong rival, and to scores of between 40 and 80 for most of my colleagues. Even my youngest son, who knows precious little about the world and has not lived in it for very long, turns out to be more influential than I am.

我这么说的依据是Klout分数，这个分数评价我们在社交网络上的重要性，满分为100分。我的Klout得分仅10分，而恼人的是我的终身对手得了68分，我的大多数同事得分在40至80分之间。即使是我那对世界知之甚少、年纪轻轻的小儿子，影响力得分也高过我。

Until last week I had lived in happy ignorance that such a thing as Klout existed. But then I read something on the Harvard Business Review website that introduced me to the “influence quotient and argued that Klout scores and similar measures are important and are going to become increasingly used in hiring and promotions. It seems some companies are already specifying that they will hire only people with Klouts of over 40 or so. It’s all rather scary.

直到上周，我还在开开心心地沉浸在无知中，根本不知道这世界上有这么个叫Klout的东西。但后来，我在《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)网站上读到一篇文章，介绍了“影响力评分，并称Klout的分数以及一些类似的影响力评估方法非常重要，将越来越多地体现在招聘和晋升中。似乎已经有一些公司明确表示，以后将只录用Klout分数超过某个分值（比如40）的求职者。这真让人不寒而栗。

So I signed up myself. I provided details of my (moribund) Facebook and LinkedIn accounts as well as my Twitter name and then, after an indecently short time, the computer coughed up my dismal score. The number is apparently based on a complicated algorithm that takes into account 400 different factors, including not only how many people retweet and “like you but how important each of them is.

因此，我在Klout上注册了一下。我提供了我的（快要荒废的）Facebook和LinkedIn账号信息，以及我的Twitter用户名。很快，电脑就算出了一个惨不忍睹的成绩。这个分数显然是根据一个复杂的算法计算出来的，考虑了400个不同的因素，其中不仅包括有多少人转发了你的Twitter消息、对你的facebook动态点了“赞，还包括到这些人的重要性如何。

My initial response to my score was disbelief. I snatched up the phone and called Klout’s chief executive, Joe Fernandez, who answered on the first ring. I found myself feebly protesting that as I have 20,000 followers on Twitter, Klout must have kocked up the kalculation, but Mr Fernandez was not impressed.

面对这个分数，我的第一反应是不相信。我抓起话机拨打了Klout首席执行官乔·费尔南德斯(Joe Fernandez)的电话，铃声刚响他就接了。我有些底气不足地抗议道，我在Twitter上有2万关注者，Klout一定是算错了。但费尔南德斯不以为意。

The number of followers means nothing, he said, as people can buy them. Although I didn’t like the insinuation, I fear Klout may have rumbled me. In truth, all my tweets are put out by the FT’s PR team, as I can’t be bothered to do it myself. I never retweet; don’t follow anyone; there is absolutely no connecting going on at all. So I guess 10 is what I deserve.

费尔南德斯说，关注者多少毫无意义，因为可以花钱买到。尽管这种暗示令我不快，但我担心Klout可能已经看穿了我。事实上，我在Twitter上的所有消息都由英国《金融时报》的公关团队代发，我可没那个工夫自己发。我从来不转发别人的消息，不关注任何人，没有在Twitter上与其他人进行任何互动。所以，我觉得自己得10分也是应该的。

In any case, a part of me is proud of the low score. There is something distinguished about being such a spectacular dud on social networks. It is evidence of having a proper life in which clout is not only measured correctly, it is spelt correctly too.

不论如何，低分倒是让我略感自豪。成为这样一个与众不同的社交网络“废物，也是一番成就。这证明我的生活是正常的，我不仅能够正确地衡量影响力这件事，还能正确地拼写这个单词（影响力的正确拼写为clout，而非klout——译者注）。

The whole idea of Klout gives me the creeps with its horrible talk of “unlocking and “leveraging influence.

Klout大谈如何“释放和“利用影响力，这套思路令我毛骨悚然。

It is also hard to respect a system in which Justin Bieber (whose moronic Twitter page says: “you are always there for me and I will always be there for you. MUCH LOVE) is the only human to have briefly reached a perfect score of 100. It is only a minor consolation that, following some recent tweaking of the algorithm, he has dropped a few points in order to allow Barack Obama to squeeze in ahead of him.

这样一个评分体系也很难赢得尊重。按照这个体系的评分，唯一曾短暂地达到过满分的人类是贾斯廷·比伯（Justin Bieber，他的Twitter主页上写着：“你们永远支持我，我也将永远支持你们。爱你们。简直弱智。）。尽管Klout最近调整了算法，比伯的评分下跌了几分，被巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)超过，但这也只能略微让人感到安慰。

But the main problem with Klout is that it is a nonsense to try to boil down something as qualitative as influence into a single number. It fails to distinguish between someone who is influential in the world of dog biscuits and someone who is influential in defence policy: both are ranked the same.

但Klout的主要问题在于，像影响力这样非定量的东西，是无法简化为一个分数的。这种打分无法区分一个在狗饼干领域有影响的人和一个在国防政策领域有影响的人：两个人的分数是相同的。

Even more objectionable is what obsessing over Klout scores does to people: it makes them twitchy and stupid. On Twitter, every few seconds someone tweets: “My Klout score has just gone up two points!!!! And then sycophants retweet these dreary messages and the scores rise even further.

更讨厌的是，对Klout分数的高度关注让人变得神经兮兮、愚不可及。在Twitter上，每隔几秒钟就会有人发布这样的消息：“我的Klout刚刚涨了两分！！！！然后，一些好事者又转发这些无聊的消息，让消息原作者的Klout分数进一步升高。

Yet, despite all this, I can’t shrug off my own failure entirely. Never since my fourth-year Latin exam at school have I done quite so badly at anything. But back then I was all defiance; now I find it much harder to laugh off my lack of Klout than I did my stupidity faced with one of the world’s most beautiful and rigorous languages.

不过，尽管如此，我仍然不能做到一点儿都不把这种失败放在心上。自从四年级拉丁文考试以来，我还没有在任何事情上如此失败过。但那时，我的心中惟有不屑——面对世界上最优美、最严谨的一门语言，我对自己的愚钝一笑置之。现在，我无法坦然接受惨不忍睹的Klout分数。

The difference is that Klout, unlike Latin, is not a language of the past. It is a measure of proficiency (even if a crude and flawed one) at a language that almost everyone seems to have learnt how to speak – apart, it seems, from me.

Klout与拉丁文的区别在于，它不是一门“过去的语言。它更像是一门语言的水平测试（尽管这种测试既不成熟也不完善），而这门语言似乎人人都会说——只除了我之外。

I fear I am going to have to try a bit harder. I am going to wrest back my Twitter account and do it myself. I will try a bit on LinkedIn.

恐怕我还得再努力些。我准备要回我的Twitter账号，亲自打理。我还打算尝试打理一下我的LinkedIn。

If all fails, there is a fallback. A young colleague to whom I confided my score last week said that he was sure he could boost it massively in a mere half an hour if I handed control of my accounts to him.

如果这一切努力都失败了，我还有后备方案。上周我把我的Klout分数告诉了一位年轻同事，他说只要我把账号交给他，他只用半个小时就能让我的Klout分数大幅提高。

Kloutsourcing is what he called it. I rather like it.

他管这个叫“挣Klout(Kloutsourcing)。正合我意。