Klout recently launched +K. A service that allows you to award five points to your friends, per day, in any category you choose. For example I can give Brandon Prebynski five points in the social media category. Or I can give him five points in the raccoon category. It’s my pick.

This service is a part of the new beta roll out that Klout has done with their redesign. While it has got some people talking about how cool it is I think it’s a piece of junk. A lot of people look at it as an influence creator and a way to build influence through your existing network. This could in fact be true, but all you are really doing is helping Klout with no real reward.

The Nitty Gritty
Klout allows you to disperse five points daily to whom ever you wish. All you have to do is allocate those points with a particular category. Thus building someone’s influence in this category. Enough times by enough people, you have a “thought leader,” right? Wrong, well sort of wrong.

What this is allowing Klout to do is a build a better, more targeting “influencer” rating and database based from crowd-sourcing. Yea not a big deal right? Well consider how much money Klout gets from companies for their services and campaigns that are Klout integrated- tons. Isn’t that their method of monetization. Now you are helping them, at no charge, at most you may get a Kobe Bryant Black Mamba poster. The benefit I will say is that it will be easier to target people. But within the Klout algorithm that is still, well, useless.

Now companies will be able to target people better. You won’t get Bob Barbecue confused with Dave Digital but you are still using their system of an unknown algorithm. What irks me the most is that while Klout pays their “scientists” ton of money to create an algorithm they are asking people to basically build the most important part of an existing “influencer” database with +K. On top of that they still don’t tell you what or how you get ranked. I mean, they do but only based on what metrics, not HOW they use those metrics to determine your “klout.”

Gini Dietrich mentioned in her post today about the gaming factor in Klout’s +K and how it touched on four different areas: Appointment, Influence, Progression and Community. While Progression is easily hit, similar to how LinkedIn has done it but instead of an actual profile progress it uses the influence ranking metric, the others still lack, even though +K is supposed to make things better.

Klout & Other Networks
So now you get badges, um, Foursquare? Now you can have lists and you can categorize yourself and others, um, Twitter and WeFollow. You slowly progress in the network with more things that you complete, um, LinkedIn? On top of this all, they have no leader board and a point system doesn’t really work without the accumulation leading to something.

The one area Klout has yet to tap into has been the blogosphere. While that to me is a real way to measure influence. Klout could easily ask for WordPress, a commenting platform you use or any other CMS and pull in basic data. Something like the amount of posts published, comments written, comments responded and the amount of comments you’ve written/replied to tells me more to your online activity than how many times a picture i posted online of monkeys kissing gets retweeted. And don’t’ get me started with the analytics portion of a website.

If Klout wants to have some leverage in the near future, especially since analytics, metrics and KPIs for companies are becoming real, measurable and obtainable things they need to beef it up. +K is a joke to me, may not be for you, but the real value lay with the old version of Klout, on a shelf somewhere in Klout HQ.

I’ve recently boycotted Mashable as a “source” for anything relevant in social technology or social news. It wasn’t until today that someone actually asked me why. I told my cousin this:

“Mashable is too crap for me now. They are focusing on the HOW TO and the 5 STEPS TO THIS AND THAT. It isn’t industry forward, just articles that get visitors that get clicks on their ads that get them money.”

But instead of just making the claim I’m going to do a little experiment. I am setting up an RSS on some similar and popular tech blogs. Like many of us who have taken a class in journalism know the common idea of a news worthy story fall into one of three categories: Health, Sex or Money. Now I know this isn’t necessarily true for all type of tech news or news in general but can account for most of it.

The Experiment.

For a month I’ll RSS tech, social tech and social media blogs similar to Mashable and compare the results. I’ll see what is being reported, the news value, timeliness, and the physical content.

Once I compile everything I think it will solidify my reasoning as to why I dislike Mashable and thus allow me to help everyone else boycott their crap until they really understand their position and what kind of value they can bring to everyone who reads them, not just their advertisers.

Here are some of the blogs I’m RSS-ing. I won’t officially start the project until Monday, May 23, since its the start of a week and stop on June 23.

If you know of other blogs let me know in the comments sections. If you are feeling extremely helpful, maybe even a link to their RSS so I can whip it up extra quick.

Blogs currently in the RSS

Mashable, of course.
Tech Crunch
Social Times
CNN- Tech
NY Times – Technology
GigaOm
Read Write Web

Added: AllFacebook, Digital Inspiration Tech Blog, PSFK,

Basically from middle school and on I remember our supply sheets always asking for pens and pencils. Fully stocked, we’d all go to class on our first, dressed in our best and ready to start yet another year of school. We used pencils for math and pens for basically any other non-mathematics based subjects (read English, Social Studies, etc).

Eighth grade came. Teachers claimed they throw away our papers if there wasn’t a name on it. It was a bluff for most while some actually stood by their statement, regardless, most students were given a shot to fix their mistake of the missing name before the all mighty zero hit the grade books.

High school started. We had lockers, people were kissing and holding hands in the halls, and football players basically ran the school, at least at my school always. I always knew I was a smart and fairly athletic kid. I wanted people to know me and I wanted them to hear what I had to say. So I became a football player.

In high school teachers were less “lax” than previous years, but that really meant they either gave you more wiggle room if they liked your or less if you annoyed them. I stayed on their good side.

In college they told us to look good, impress the teacher, be tentative and introduce yourself to each professor. I believed that up until I saw a line that went from the stage of a 400 seat lecture hall to the doors in the back. Teachers didn’t really care if they knew you. They could judge, understand and evaluate you based on your work. I had one instructor, Professor Batchelor, who taught Mass Comm & Society. It was an intro course for mass communications majors and, again, filled with 400 or more students. He was more lax than anyone I’ve met. He gave us our assignments, he gave us options and that was that. Our final two assignment had to be no less than 3 pages each. I wrote on eighties pop-culture and on MTV. Seven pages and 12 pages respectively.

About two years later I had him again. On the first day of class he was telling us how “you should be the smartest person in the room,” as well as tremendous writing skills and other things. He pointed at me and said, “Patrick, you were in my Mass Comm & Society class. You wrote really good papers.” While I knew who he was I didn’t think he knew who I was, let alone my name, especially from two years prior, but apparently my worked proved my value. I spoke, he listened.

I should be the smartest person in the room. During my first semester of my junior year, right when I got into the PR program, I realized the only way I could secure my future – the way I wanted – was to do stuff my peers didn’t. I read industry stuff, tech articles, PR case studies, the list goes on. I did what I had to do to be the smartest person in the room, and I quickly became that person. At the end of that semester Batchelor and another professor said Mark Clennon and I may be two of the brightest students they’ve seen. I can’t quite remember who and how it was said exactly but you get the gist. We basically called ourselves the dream team. WE were the smartest in the room.

Throughout school I’ve been told how to prepare and how to meet the requirements and bars set for me. This is how you get an ‘A,’ here is what you do to get stronger, here is how you get smarter. But now, no one is paid to hold our hand. Instead, we are paid to produce. Everything leading up to tomorrow, graduation (unless you are reading today, Thursday May 5, 2011 or another date after) was preparation. Working toward the “heavenly” goal of getting a job after graduation. No one tells you that you’ll be kicked out of the nest, literally, and start paying bills, loans, figuring out health, dental and vision insurance, 401k, how to divvy up 2-5 weeks of paid vacation, let alone how to find a job.

Basically everything up until now has been in sections. We go to school, in sections, with small bumps in our timelines, then move onto another section. What happens when you’re in the “final” section with only bumps to look forward to? I’m lucky enough to leave college with a job starting roughly two weeks after, thanks to my friends and, I’d argue, hard work. But I’d say the transition is harder than anything else. I’m not one of those lucky kids who’s parents still pay for their shit. I’m on my own, 30k+ in loans and regular bills like everyone else, and I still have to find a place to live in NYC which is outside of what I consider normal means. Where is the pencil for that?

It’ll be good though. The problem with pencils is the lack of blemishes. See, with pens if you screw up you have to scribble it out. People see where you made a mistake and then what happened after that. Think of it like messing up and then fixing your mistake. Pens stain clothes, they can poke through your pants and into your legs if you sit down wrong, pens can explode. If you are dumb enough you might even get bad tasting ink your mouth. Pens are the bumps. The first ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, the failing grade on a test, the basketball roster you didn’t make. I like reading papers in pen. You can see the pressure someone wrote with, their feelings, you can see where the messed up. You can see a person.

Here goes life…starting in pen.

My love for Helvetica first stemmed from my lack and misunderstanding of design. It was the “hip” thing so, of course, like any 20something I wanted to be hip. After I began to immerse myself into the inner being of design I really began to understand some things, not only  about typography and my love for it but communication design.

We think, we speak, we write. Each of those acts are composed of language, each language is composed of words and word of letters. Each letter, in a different combination creates a variety of thoughts, moments, phrases, emotions and actions.

When we communicate with one another it is often jumbled and filled with extra, unnecessary  non-sense. We speak in fragments and often leave out the main idea we wish to portray, assuming the receiver will understand. We are saying, not communicating.

The difference here is being succinct. Being clear, concise, to the point and relevant. For me, that is the beauty of communication design. It’s the beauty of words and how we use them. You can write the same word in multiple type faces and portray a different meaning. You can use the same font in different weights to portray a different meaning.

The point isn’t necessarily Helvetica or any type face in general but rather, the power we hold when designing communication.

Adding on to my last rant about internships I want to talk about the right way to get an internship. For that matter, maybe even a job. Don’t quote me  on the job part yet since I’m only graduating college. These, again are just thoughts. Take them as you will.

Understanding Business
As I mentioned in the last post about internships, most students are looking at it from a Me angle. What can internships do for me. That idea is often translated into the job hunt as well, where can I get a job? How much will they pay me? I need to be employed. While those things are all extremely important that doesn’t translate well for any future employer. Employers and companies don’t hire because it’s graduating season and they need more college graduates. They hire because they need more employees, they are growing or want great people to help bring in revenue. Lets face it, it comes to this: Companies make money. The easiest formula to help you achieve a position (internship or not) is to show this skill I’ve laid out in a formula: Yes, it’s scientifically proven and endorsed by my mother.

you + your skills at company = revenue now.

Companies don’t hire based on looks, your twitter following or your greek affiliation. SIDE NOTE: If a company hires you for any of the above you should probably shouldn’t work there.

Companies hire you or anyone else because they believe you or anyone else can help them make money. That is your role, to grow their business and become an attribute to their current structure.

When you take the view of gaining a job away from your self and show companies how they benefit by paying you, then you can understand business to some extent.

Understanding your role in a business and their culture is almost as important as your success. Once you realize how you can help grow a company the only thing you have to do then is implement.

Stop thinking about your future job as a personal needs and start thinking about it as your business solutions.

I’ve read a few articles and talked to a hand full of people on the whole paid internship thing and I’ll say, as a prior unpaid intern, GET OVER IT. Aside from most kids my age being handed everything in the world there is more to my argument than that. Let me use this space to say, I’m aware that some aspects of unpaid internships are illegal. With that in mind, keep reading:

Who Gains from Your “Learning” Experience?
Scenario:
You are on your first run at trying to get an internship. You spam companies your resume, because you think that is the right way to do it, or you call family and see if they have any connections.

Once you land an interview, by the grace of god, they ask you what you can bring to this company. Your response, “I’m passionate and want to learn!” News flash, that doesn’t matter. Your view is, I need to gain experience and hopefully they can help. But they think of it in a different light. Lets break that down…

An intern is there to help keep things together, sort of like glue, but not as strong or important. Think of an intern like a sticky note; there to help remind you of tasks but it won’t be there for ever. It may fall down but you sort of expect that. One day, they will no longer work or you won’t need it any more. Eveyone knows this and expects that sticky notes work in this fashion. They are temporary. Every company knows that interns and internships are temporary.

Aside from that, passion and learning doesn’t give a company a revenue. If you can show me how your passion to learn will generate X amount of dollars to a company, then I’ll hire you for half my salary to spray your passion of learning all over my room/office/whatever. Your passion and desire to learn does not directly benefit the company, client or business.In fact you should consider what benefit, skills and values you can bring to a company, directly and immediately. That will get you a job, not “passion to learn.”

Consider this aspect as well. You want money for your internship. Your time is valuable, right? I mean with all the things you do: class, greek affiliation (maybe), organizations, extra curricular activities, clubbing, partying, drinking, eating, breathing, wearing clothes. The list goes on. Regardless though, you need want money for your time at your internship to learn and spew your “passion” everywhere.

Were you paid to go to school from grades K-12? Were you paid to go to college? So why should a company, that you bring no direct, immediate value or revenue pay you to “learn”? They shouldn’t.

Lets bring up another scenario. You are interning at company XYZ and they give you a task. It’s client facing, which means clients will  see it and you go to town. You beast this assignment and then, boom, slap that accomplishment sandwich right on their desk. So now, you get an email that said you did everything completely wrong and have to redo this assignment (this is that learning experience you asked for). In an even worse scenario your boss is too careless to look it over and presents to client or supervisor (if that happens quit immediately you don’t want to work at a place that presents crap). So not only have you made a mistake it was also presented! For most salaried workers I could see this eventually leading a large amount of yelling or being fired. On the extent that they ask you to re-write/re-create, no one that gets paid salary can turn in crap. It should, ideally, be right the first time. That’s why you get paid to work there.

The point of internships are to learn. You are not entitled to learn from others who don’t get paid  to babysit you. You are there to stick your nose in and get your hands slightly dirty. Realistically, at minimum, an internship should expose you to things you only read about in case studies.

Internships aren’t for those slackers who finally decide their last semester of senior year they “need” experience. If you intend on going in to your field of study then be serious about it. Just as you would anything else in life, work for it. Get your elbows dirty. I did two internship both UNPAID while living in NYC and going to NYU on a full course-load. Yea, two unpaid internships in the most expensive city in the country. What became of that? For sake of this blog post, it lead to interview and internship offers from every Tampa agency I applied to, which meant I picked where I interned next. It also lead to working with Sarah Evans, who is an incredibly talented, smart and well-known PR/SM strategist and business owner.

Also, if your school is telling you that you need an internship to graduate go raise hell. What is the point of paying someone else money (class credit) for you to gain free experience (unpaid internship)? Hit them with the ROI bomb.  On that note, do internships, even if they don’t give you school credit. Every internship I had gave me NO CREDIT toward school or graduation.

The unpaid internships were my ticket. Get over your idea of being paid. Just because mommy cleaned your clothes, cooked you dinner and gave you money while you devoured all of her time, money and resources doesn’t mean a company should either.

Last week while attending various Social Media Week events I thought to myself, “I wish I could have gone to more panels!” The funny part, even though I didn’t get to all the panels, I did attend many more parties. Most would think that it’s the college kid in me but I consider this something a bit more strategic. Especially when it comes to the post-grad job hunt.

Panel vs. Party

Consider the normal atmosphere at panels. Most of the time there is short chatting before it starts and when there is an intermission, other than that, everyone is on their own laptops or cell phones; taking notes or tweeting something. While panels are a great source of cool, focused information, it isn’t the greatest place to meet new people and to learn tons of neat things.

When you’re at a party, the atmosphere is conducive to speaking. You meet new people, have a drink, pass out business cards, and meet up with old friends. While you aren’t in an environment that is meant for “knowledge” in the sense that a panel is you still learn about people rather than a topic or niche.

The balance of course comes with the person. Understanding your reason for being at a conference and it’s relevance to you, your life and job is more important than being on any guest list or in any panel. Figure out what’s is most applicable to you and kill it.

Quality vs Quantity

While I wanted to go to all the panels I knew time would allow it. Same can be said for the parties. I picked a handful of the most important panels to me, the things that interested me the most and went with those. I learned a lot of information because I was already driven into that medium, product or platform.

I use this method when I’m at evening gatherings too. I don’t run around spamming people with my business cards and asking everyone what they do while blurting out my 30-second pitch in hopes of a hand out. I find those individuals I’ve known prior to the conference catch up and see what’s new. Often, especially when going to a far away land like New York City, your friends have friends and know people. My network great 10+ because I was introduced to another person through a mutual friend.

Both are extremely valuable, I think it just depends on your outlook and purpose. For instance, if your job is sending you to SXSWi, you better go soak up as much from the panels as you can. No one is paying you to drinking booze with big shots all night. If you’re unemployed, you better be at all that both sides have to offer.

Yesterday I attended a Q&A session with Foursquare CEO, Dennic Crowley. For a while I was impressed with his presence and ability to show a clear vision as to what he and the Foursquare team wants their product to be. Dennis and Austin Carr from Fast Company talked about many aspects of the company, many questions focused on the longevity and future of foursquare. Apart from the basic generic response Crowley made a few pokes at what will be the future of the location based startup.

Enhancing Real Life

Imagine you live in New York City and you live in Soho. Often you have no need to travel above 14^th street and you  often never do. Now imagine that day you do travel above 14^th street, maybe to central park. What Foursquare has in mind is another feature to the service that will offer location suggestions based on your check-in habits. So when you venture up to Columbus circle Foursquare will say, “Hey, based on your past check-ins you might like this place.”

Another cool thing that Crowley hinted toward was taking real life things and putting them in your pocket. We read articles online, newspapers, magazines but cannot transfer them to our phones. Pretend you are reading an article about the top-10 burger joints in New York City. Crowley wants to enable users to add those items to your to-do list and when you are nearby, you get alerted.

Finally someone is really finding away to bridge the gap between technology and our real lives. While devices consume us they still create a void in how we communication and function as human beings.

One of the more important and valuable things Crowley said, “We don’t wanna tell people how to use the product, we want them to tell us.”

This, to me, is the epitome of user-generated content in a real-time fashion. It isn’t to say that other companies aren’t doing this but it’s clear Foursquare understands the importance of being agile.

Clearly they are on to something, many argue about check-in “fatigue” and how to resurrect the inactive users to create a more robust system. I love using their service and I noticed that I’ll use it more or forget, I think the key to making foursquare a household name is creating a more utilitarian tool that we are inclined to use, not because of badges and specials, but because it makes our lives better and easier.

My first panel during the week long events that make up Social Media Week in NYC was “Social Gaming: How Social Dynamics are Reshaping Games.” I knew the panel would be interesting since Angry Birds consumers 200 million minutes of our time per month. They often talked about gamer incentives and how to create a “game” for all kinds of users. The discussed FarmVille, CityVille, OMGpop and many other games and platforms that are devouring are attention span and time. The greatest part of the panel: discussing social utility.

Manny Anekal, Director of Brand Advertising at Zynga Games first brought up this point when the panel shifted from gaming platforms to advertising and branding through social games. The idea is that any promoted item, gimmick, or bonus that is advertised in a game or on a gaming platform shouldn’t be cumbersome to a gamer or user. Often they get in the way and as Josh Shabtai, Emerging Media Strategist at JWT put it, “gamer punishment.”

Anekal said any product placement or advertisements should be considered a social utility. In other words, should be beneficial to all parties, the advertisers and the user, more importantly, to the user. He mentioned a free promotional backpack people could receive in CityVille that was an advertisement from a company. It was something useful for the users of their game and managed to let a brand penetrate that market of unique users enough to stay with them, in the form of a digital backpack.

While this may seem odd to consider in an age where new media is trouncing traditional practices, this idea makes sense. Consider a social utility aspect for campaigns. Often companies are looking to relay a message to an audience, and until recently, it was in an obtrusive way. Whether through a billboard, radio ad or television commercial everything interrupted our what we wanted to do. The billboard distracted us from driving, the radio ad is bumping into our favorite station and the television commercial just made you wait for the best part of a show.

If we consider the idea of social utility, as a strategic method, rather than a tactic, than we, as media professionals, can really create campaigns that have mutual benefit for all parties involved. If more PR/Marketing/Advertising companies considers a social utility, something that we share voluntarily and openly, often. Like our calendars, texting or even photos of our kids, then maybe we’d have better targeted and more inventive campaigns.

We need to think. Think outside of, on top of and around the box of normalcy and what has been done before. Basing a new campaign on a previous campaign that garnered great results will get us nowhere. It’s innovative ideas and intuitive thinking that breaks models and makes progressive moves forward in our industry. By the way, just doing things on Facebook and Twitter isn’t a social utilitarian approach. It’s as cumbersome as TV commercials.

There is beauty in vulnerability. Not because we can take advantage of it, but because we can see someone in their truest form. Kanye is a good example, for me at least. Even though he is a horrible singer, he manages to belt out tunes that you can tell come from the deepest parts of his soul.

There aren’t too many campaigns that really strike the human emotion cord but when they do, they ring deep. How do we, as marketers, communicators, advertisers, manage to strike that cord and really make something work. Not just for the sake of a dollar, but to really get a real message across. One that resonates within each individual. How can we, as an industry, create a message that is unifying across so many platforms that it manages to evoke one feeling from each individual?

I couldn’t tell you.

I’d like to think that truth and honesty steer us in the right direction. I believe that if we are behind our messages, genuine and believe it will benefit society that we may be able to reach others. Possibly if we understand human emotion, not just from a communications stance, but as people. Consider how you might feel the first time your son scores a touchdown in his little league football game. Or maybe how you felt when your daughter brought home her honor roll award. Maybe how you felt when landed your first job after graduating college. Or when you get that big break you’ve been looking for.

How do we make these emotions resonate in our messaging?

I think the T-Mobile’s Welcome Back video does a decent job and so does Katy Perry’s Firework video.