social scoring

The act of rating a person's level of influence based on evaluating one's followers, friends, and postings on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Companies like Klout, PeerIndex and Twitter Grader are in the process of scoring millions, eventually billions, of people on their level of influence but they are not simply looking at the number of followers or friends you’ve amassed. They also measure influence in more nuanced ways, and post their judgments — in the form of a score — online. The increasing adoption of "social scoring" in mainstream culture can help build a personal brand and your rating could help determine how well you are treated by everyone with whom you interact. Critics, however, are concerned that we are moving closer to creating social media caste systems, where people with high scores get preferential treatment by retailers, prospective employers, even prospective dates. It is important to note that "social scoring" is subjective and imperfect. Most analytics companies rely heavily on a user’s Twitter and Facebook profiles, leaving out other online activities, like blogging or posting YouTube videos. As for influence in the offline world — it doesn’t count.