Klout (and your Klout score) measures your level of influence and authority on certain topics throughout the Klout community and amongst all the social networks you allow it access to.
It is a social media aggregation site that brings business marketers and entrepreneurs together, along with their social network presence, into one big community. In this way, Klout members can give each other score boosts and such. This is commonly called ‘giving +K’ and each member has limited amounts of Klout score boosts to give.
Those with higher Klout scores tend to be more involved in the social networks, they get more attention, they have more ‘pull’ and tend to have big groups of friends, followers, or what have you. It takes lots of engagement to get to this point, but all of that engagement is usually your own social media and web marketing efforts.
Getting lots of people in your corner (giving you +K boosts and such) helps you rise to the top of the social ladder at Klout, and makes you more important in that space. If you’re sitting in a position with a high level of influence on lots of topics, you can then leverage Klout and its community for marketing purposes. (that’s the end goal and purpose).
Think all that stuff is crazy? In perspective, Klout is a baby compared to its ‘big daddy’ , Empire Avenue (which has a huge community of Klout followers, very well inter-linked between EmpireAvenue and Klout). Check it out and if you stick around, you’ll see what I mean.
These tools are largely for the purpose of social media marketing, and unless you like competitive socializing, a typical user wouldn’t find much use for these places. But they can be a fun little diversion.