Klout, the divisive measurer of social influence, unveiled Klout Experts last week. The new product is essentially a Q&A feature that will offer a way for users to improve their Klout scores while asserting themselves as topic experts. CEO Joe Fernandez says Experts exists to help users find answers to questions whose answers live outside of their personal network.
“This is where Klout Experts will come to the rescue,” Fernandez writes in the company’s blog post announcing the feature. “The advice and answers you share through Klout will reach others at their exact time of need. Through our partnerships with Bing and others, people searching for help will be able to find your responses, then look at your Klout Moments to understand your perspective, and even connect with you on social media for follow-up conversations.”
Fernandez says Experts is meant to enable users to actually be influential, rather than just being deemed so.
Answers will be limited to 300 characters to ensure brevity and will appear in Bing search results. The product is available to a small set of users during, but those interested in getting early access can sign up for the waitlist.
Klout Experts put the company in direct competition with the likes of Quora and Yelp, which may seem like an odd move. However, there’s the possibility of Klout melding Experts with its Perks and Klout for Business products, which could mean that users who offer high-quality answers to questions are rewarded with Perks. (Klout announced today that 1 million Perks have been claimed on its site.)
Fernandez sees his company, which is on track to rake in $10 million in revenue in 2013, becoming more like LinkedIn and getting most of its revenue from products sold to businesses. This would help the site become less dependent on how often consumers visit the site.
LinkedIn used to have its own Q&A platform called LinkedIn Answers, but it shut that down on Jan. 31.
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