Clout

M and I recently sent out a year-end letter, at the end of which we promised to post more often.

(On a more random note, have I ever mentioned how much I dislike the word "blog"? Not really sure why, but I think I believe that I'd blog more if it wasn't called blogging. And yes, I am aware of how absurd that sounds.)

So anyway, I've been trying to figure out what to post about, but the fact of the matter is, I feel like my life's been ridiculously boring lately.

Earlier today, while wandering around online, I stumbled across Sarah Lacy's interview with the CEO of a somewhat new startup called Klout. Honestly, Joe Fernandez's lengthy and unclear responses have me a little worried for the company, but I was intrigued enough to check out their site and see what my Klout score was.

It's basically a complex algorithm that measures what kind of reach one has on social media: Twitter, Facebook, etc. I scored an embarrassingly low 11/100. I can certainly chalk up my poor showing to the fact that living in China means that Twitter, Facebook, and Blogger are all blocked. But I spend most of my online time on a VPN, so that's not really an excuse.

To my credit, I'm actually trying to limit my reach. Recently, my personal Twitter account got linked to some posts I made for work, and now some of the aggregator sites have taken to retweeting my work posts with an @mention.

I still haven't quite figured out how I feel about that. I'd probably rather not have random readers perusing my resume on LinkedIn, or checking out pictures of me on Facebook. But, on the other hand, it's free publicity.

My privacy settings weren't really a huge issue when I was a 'virtual' nobody on the Internet. In fact, there was a certain exhibitionist thrill to the public aspect of early social media. I could tell the whole world what I had for breakfast, with nary a thought for who was listening (and whether they actually cared).

But that thrill's fading fast. M's going to be blogging more for her work too, so we're both left a little unclear about what this space, and others like it, will be for us in the future.

Obviously, we'd love more readers. There's a part of me (probably larger than I'd like to admit), that selfishly writes in order to be read.

But, I'm apprehensive about continuing to just fling content into cyberspace for any rando to read.

The bright side of all this is that, if my Klout score is any indication, I don't actually have to worry about too many people reading this.