My blogging teacher suggested I sign up for Klout, which is a service that measures your reach online.  After using it for a couple of months, I’m not convinced that it actually measures very much.
You can only connect Klout to one Facebook page.  I have three, one that's inactive, one for my business, and the one that’s my personal page.  I chose to attach Klout to my personal page, which has the most friends, but I’d like to be able to include my business page in the measurement, because I post different material to both pages. The Morbid Curiosity people only partially overlap the friends on my personal page.  

Klout also allows you to connect your twitter feed.  I use twitter pretty much as an afterthought.  I broadcast there, but I don’t follow links from people I don’t know in real life.  (I want to know where I’m headed before I start clicking links at random.)  I find the micro-blogging thing frustrating at the best of times.  So measuring my use of twitter doesn’t feel as if it’s the truest metric of my life on the web.

I was able to connect my WordPress blog to Klout, but not this one, which feeds to Amazon and Goodreads.  For that matter, I wasn’t able to connect Klout to either Amazon or Goodreads, where I have friends that don’t follow me anywhere else. I couldn't connect to Pinterest either, where I spend a whole lot of time connecting with strangers, or to Stumbleupon.

In addition to not being able to get anything like a true picture of my reach on the internet, Klout suggests that you make a list of topics on which you feel you’re influential.  However, it doesn’t allow you to suggest your own topics.  Since I blog about cemeteries, I would have liked to add cemeteries and graveyards to the list of topics I’m an expert on.  Klout allowed me to claim to be an expert at the business of cemeteries, which I most certainly am not, but not in the history, art, architecture, or symbolism of them.

For the last couple of weeks, my Klout score has hovered around 49.  I understand that means 49 of 100, but I’m not sure what that signifies.  I guess the person with the highest Klout score is Justin Bieber, with his legions of girl fans.  I don't in any way aspire to that kind of influence.  I also don’t feel like my little media world is anywhere near half of Bieber’s.

I think the idea behind Klout is great. It's just not very useful as it stands now.