Social reputation company Klout purchased for reported $200 million

by Casey Newton

Source Fortune and Lithium Technologies (Business Wire)

Mar 26, 2014, 11:02 PM UTC

Casey Newton is the editor of the Platformer newsletter and cohost of the Hard Fork podcast.

Klout, which purports to measure your influence through a controversial score, has been purchased by Lithium Technologies for a reported price of nearly $200 million. Lithium — which helps businesses manage customer service through social media — announced the news on Thursday, after Fortune reported the acquisition and value the night before. The deal, a mix of cash and stock, is double the purchase price that was reported when news of the acquisition first leaked last month.

Klout will continue under Lithium

Lithium will continue to operate Klout and its signature score, which measures the reach of your activity on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks and calculates a numerical value between 1 and 100. Lithium also says that it will enhance its own product offerings as a result of the acquisition, though it’s unclear if this will mean integrating Klout’s best-known product or simply using its data.

Over the past year, Klout has expanded the analytics tools that it offers to marketers while trying to entice more consumers to use its platform by rolling out a Bing integration and a question-and-answer platform. But the service struggled to gain mainstream adoption, and has served as a reliable punchline for social-media skeptics — even so, it seems that investors are getting a much better return than it originally seemed.

Update: this story has been updated to reflect Lithium’s announcement that it has acquired Klout and will continue to operate it.

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