Klout Lets The Riffraff Into Cathay Pacific’s First Class Lounge

It’s hard to tell who looks sillier: Cathay Pacific or Klout.  

Cathay Pacific and Klout partnered to allow anyone with a Klout Score of 40 or above access to the First Class Lounge in San Francisco International Airport.  

Here’s the core of the issue: anyone who’s even remotely active on Facebook and Twitter has a Klout Score of 40.  It’s like rewarding someone for brushing their teeth: it’s good, but it’s also expected.

So who looks sillier?

Cathay seems rather clueless for setting the bar so low.  Any goofball who posts pictures from Reddit’s “Funny” section, or has a baby, or had a birthday in the last month, or posts Bible quotations, or says, “I’m sad…,” or… yeah, anyone who gets attention on Facebook can get in to the first class lounge.  

I’m sure the legitimate First Class flier will love rubbing elbows with that person who posted the, “If this gets 1,000 Likes, Bobby gets his surgery for free” scam.

Klout seems entirely clueless about their business and product.  Instead of using the Klout Score, why wouldn’t they only reward people who are influential about airlines, airports, or customer service?  That would highlight the useful aspect of their product (audience segmentation) and would also deliver a more valuable customer to Cathay.

This loops back to a broader point that Klout seems to not understand why they’re in business.  The Klout Score gets them attention, but it also makes them look like buffoons (I’m more influential than this guy, who has 44,000 Twitter followers and thousands of Tumblr followers? Come on.)

They should focus on their audience segmentation, which is actually useful to businesses.

So who’s sillier?  I say Klout.  Cathay ran an imperfect experiment on a new platform. Klout squandered the opportunity to promote the valuable part of their business and, in the process, might flood a First Class Lounge with, well, unsavory characters.  

When, exactly, is Kleiner Perkins going exert the influence a $30M investment purchases and install a good management team at Klout?

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