Klout partnerships with companies like Bing, Chrome suggest it will remain important. Having a high Klout score becomes natural from behaviors one wants to engage in anyway, like being involved in different networks and posting quality content periodically. The author tells a story where their cell phone battery helped call for rescue after becoming stranded on an icy cliff, making them think technology may save people in the long run by resetting expectations around always being able to reach others in need.

1. A View From Precipice Edge

2. We do not know that Klout will be
important in the future, but the
partnerships with
Bing, Chrome, and many big
companies suggest it will be. There
are marketing courses now where
your grade for the course depends
on your Klout score!
“Predicting the Internet's catastrophic collapse and ghost sites galore in 1996.
(From the Ether) (Industry Trend or Event)(Column)InfoWorld | December 04, 1995 |
Metcalfe, Robert M. | Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996
hinge on the Internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet, which
only just recently got this section here in InfoWorld, will soon go spectacularly supernova
and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. Here's why there soon will be only World Wide
Web ghost pages: Money. Investors poured a lot of money into the Internet but ….”

3. Claiming today is your birthday or
that you are getting married will
increase your Klout score
temporarily, as will contacting high
Kout people and getting them to
react back to you. But these
strategies are not sustainable.

4. Being involved in a number of different
networks and social media sites helps,
but quality trumps quantity. Many high
Klout people are not constantly active
on sites, may be silent for long periods.
Being influential in the real world also
helps.

6. A high Klout score becomes a natural side
effect of behavior you want to be engaging
in anyway!

7. When a cell phone with an
extra battery saved my life
on Signal Hill in December
2004, it got me thinking
about whether this was a
metaphor for how
technology will save us all
in the long run.

8. I will tell you the Signal Hill story and you can come to your own conclusions.

9. I run Leonard Cohen Nights musical
tribute events celebrating Leonard
Cohen’s birthday in September in
Edmonton. Vicky Hynes runs a three day
Feast of Cohen between Christmas and
New Years, in St. Johns, Newfoundland.
In 2004 she asked me and my wife to
join them for their event as a special
guest. We arrived December 28 th with
plans to attend the December 29 th
performance at 8 pm.

10. The evening of the 29th and
morning of the 29th we had
nothing to do and it sat there
majestically looking back at us!
“Come to me” it seemed to say.

12. This becomes
important later in
the story!

13. We did notice there
were no footprints
in the fresh fallen
snow on the trail!

14. !

15. My coat was very
slippery and we
were cold enough to
have stopped
shivering, an
ominous sign!

16. The circuit board of
the phone kept
freezing up and
shorting our from
the sea spray but by
warming the phone
and battery in my
hand and replacing
one battery as the
other froze I was
able to make the
call.

17. Five stayed on the safe
ground above us and one
rappelled down to our
steeply inclined icy rock
perch. He connected the
two of us and our digital
camera to the rope and we
gradually inched back to
safety one by one.

18. We freshened up and were
able to make it to our seats
of honor at the Feast of
Cohen show right on time
at 8 pm!

19. If the default position of human
beings is to have a cell phone, is it
correct to say that we are saved by
cell phones regularly, or is that the
wrong way to think about it? We
reset life’s expectations to where
we are always able to reach others
when we need them. That becomes
just normal life.

20. Is it possible we are safer because
of technology and just don’t realize
it? Safety accompanies abundance
and post-scarcity.
Is it possible Klout is making us
better more goal directed Internet
citizens?