Social profiling
Social profiling is the process of constructing a social media user's profile using his or her social data. In general, profiling refers to the data science process of generating a person's profile with computerized algorithms and technology.[1] There are various platforms for sharing this information with the proliferation of growing popular social networks, including but not limited to LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and Twitter.[2]
Tools[edit]
Klout[edit]
Klout is a popular online tool that focuses on assessing a user's social influence by social profiling. It takes several social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter etc.) and numerous aspects into account and generate a user's score from 1 to 100. Regardless of one's number of likes for a post, or connections on LinkedIn, social media contains plentiful personal information. Klout generates a single score that indicates a person's influence.[22]
In a study called "How Much Klout do You Have...A Test of System Generated Cues on Source Credibility" done by Chad Edwards, Klout scores can influence people's perceived credibility.[23] As Klout Score becomes a popular combined-into-one-score method of accessing people's influence, it can be a convenient tool and a biased one at the same time. A study of how social media followers influence people's judgments done by David Westerman illustrates that possible bias that Klout may contain.[24] In one study, participants were asked to view six identical mock Twitter pages with only one major independent variable: page followers. Result shows that pages with too many or too fewer followers would both decrease its credibility, despite of its similar content. Klout score may be subject to the same bias as well.[24]
While this is sometimes used during recruitment process, it remains to be controversial.
Kred[edit]
Kred not only assigns each user an influence score, but also allows each user to claim a Kred profile and Kred account. Through this platform, each user can view how top influencers engage with their online community and how each of your online action impacted your influence scores.