action and influence

I tried out Klout for the first time yesterday and did not understand my Klout score at all. According to Klout, I'm an Explorer. I feel like I should tweet back "Thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida." (First one to identify the name of the song and the band gets a free shoutout for your blog.)

I love Klout's definition of influence and action:

"We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet, a comment, or a click."

OK, so what about actions like:

• Grab the binoculars and go look for the Pink-footed Goose that @bbcbirds just tweeted
• Go to Mass Innovation Night and network with entrepreneurs live and in person (OK, so that's sort of a gray area because I did tweet about it while I was there)
• Run down to the Andover Bookstore to buy the Mark Twain autobiography
• Try a new soup recipe (What, you don't follow @whatsthesoup?)

What about tweets that get you to vote for somebody or take to the streets in protest? Do you have to retweet, reply, or click something first? Even die hard political tweeters went out and pressed the flesh like it was the freakin' 1960s this year in Massachusetts.

And who influences me? According to Klout, I'm influenced by Evan Williams and National Geographic along with a couple of people I know in real life. Know what? Despite my finding Ev amusing and National Geographic interesting enough to share, there are a whole bunch of tweeters that have way more influence on what I think about and what I do in the world.

Let us not confuse online influence with real influence.