I was one of the first 10 employees at Klout.<p>The initial core idea was good: To hold big brands responsible by empowering ordinary people to be heard and recognized as influential on social media.<p>From the inside, it was an amazing journey. Definitely the most fun job I've had so far in many ways. So much technical freedom to do whatever we wanted (yikes ;), and so many parties!<p>The team was also high caliber. Good engineers, good biz dev, marketing, everything. Many of my former colleagues continued on to greatness, from serial entrepreneurs, to one who's now the President of AOL. :)<p>After I departed in 2012, the public interest seemed to die down, and hockey stick growth along with it.<p>Sad to see it shutting completely down, always thought it was a cool idea. The amount of controversy just from putting a score by someones twitter handle remains incredible! It really opened up my eyes to how much subtle product decisions can manipulate users (for better or worse.. it's up to the PM).<p>At the same time, the way twitter caters to narcissism bothered me then and still bothers me now. Would've been the best if we'd found a way to dial down the narcissism and turn up just the Whuffie [0]!<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie</a>