I think what you’re really asking for is a discussion of Klout. I’ll start it, but I’m going to admit I only know so much about it since I only got turned onto it in the past few weeks.
It all started when I wanted to know who I should be interacting with on Twitter. I mean I knew a retweet from someone with 100 followers doesn’t mean as much as a retweet from someone with 10,000 followers. I also wanted something that would let me objectively measure how I’m improving with social media. I’ve been a lot more active lately - is it helping? Also, with social becoming so important to Google, what measures out there mimic what Google may be doing?
There are a number of measures out there. Klout is the biggest and by far the one with the most funding. But you might also want to look at Kred. I tried Kred, hated it (compared to Klout) and got away from it as quickly as I could. I now forget why I literally deleted my account with them rather than just let it go dormant - but there was something.
Klout doesn’t just look at Twitter. It looks at Facebook, Foursquare, Tumblr, YouTube, etc. So your Klout score is based on more than just Twitter - but only if you sign up and tell them about your other profiles. Without the account it’s just based on Twitter. However, with some services (like Tumblr) they’re still evaluating things and your activity doesn’t contribute to your score (yet). But I see Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare contributing to my score so far.
One irritating thing is that they only consider one item on Facebook - so either a personal profile or a page. If you have multiple pages you can only pick one to factor into your score. I have a rawTOP page and a Breeding Zone page - I can’t include both, even though Breeding Zone is under the rawTOP brand umbrella.
I should mention that people are winning and losing jobs (even getting tenure) because of Klout. You can’t get a social media job these days without showing your Klout score. And if your score is in the 40s the guy who’s in the 60s will beat you out for the job every time. So Klout is having a very real impact.
Klout looks at how active you are, how many followers you have, how often people interact with you, and how important those other people are who are interacting with you. And ditto for the other services. For example, they’ll look at how many Facebook friends you have, how many people share what you post, how many likes you get, and so on.
The score is logarithmic from 0 to 100, so it gets harder to advance the higher up you go. From what I’ve seen, for someone in adult, a score in the 40s says you’re doing something / making an effort. A score in the 50s is good. A score in the 60s is impressive, and a score in the 70s is pretty elite. Underwear brands have it much easier than porn brands because they can have strong Facebook presences. And “cleaner” stuff does better than hardcore but that makes sense since people are more willing to share a pic of a muscle guy with their friends than they are a pic of a cummy ass.
What’s sort of interesting is how average Joe’s can have higher Klout scores than major, active brands. Case and point “Mike” (@PrnPrtyPlay - a vers muscular barebacker / pnp guy in NYC) has a Klout score of 63 while Treasure Island - a strong active brand - doesn’t do as well. @TIMPorn has a score of 56, @PaulMorrisTIM has a score of 51, @MitchMasonXXX has a score of 49, etc.
I think one thing that would be useful is compiling a list of Klout scores for gay porn. I’d like to know who are the people with good Klout scores so I can pay them a bit more attention than everyone else. But if I start a list it’ll take a moderator to keep it up-to-date.