Influence Shakeup: Kred Gains A Great Evangelist While Klout Loses One

It’s an interesting morning here in Silicon Valley as we wake up to discover some updates in the startup world. Sure, people coming and going are nothing new or surprising, but within the influence metric space, there’s a lot of discussion going on about whether it’s good or bad or even relevant for companies to figure out and use. At the forefront of these conversations are the evangelists — these are the people who will go out into the world and praise the name of these startups and help show you the light as to why you want to use them. Today, there are two influence metric giants out in the world: Klout and Kred. And while they are both great, they each have different news to share.

Porter Gale joins Kred as Chief Evangelist and Advisor

One of the best marketers in Silicon Valley has just joined up with Kred as their Chief Evangelist. Porter Gale, probably best known recently for being the Chief Marketing Officer of tech-friendly Virgin America airlines, will be the startup’s lead advisor on their new Kred Stars and Kred Leaders program. Basically, she’s going to be their evangelist who will help educate and help marketing executives while also developing advocacy programs with the community. It’s a very smart hire and something that I think plays well to Mrs. Gale’s strengths.

When asked about her thoughts about Kred, Mrs. Gale responded:

Kred is an essential marketing metric for brands that want to build and tend to close, trusting relationships with their audience.  Kred’s community-based approach creates unprecedented opportunities to identify influencers and reach the small close networks of people that share their interests.

Kred is an off-shoot product created by PeopleBrowsr, a social analytics startup with offices here in San Francisco. Kred measures influence in online communities within specific interests. A competitor to Klout, rather than ranking influence based on scores from 1-100, they offer it from 1-1,000 and claim to be the only influence measurement based on 1,000 days of social data.

Congratulations Porter!

Klout lacks a bit of influence with the departure of Megan Berry

Also announced today, Klout’s Senior Marketing Manager (and perhaps the main person people receive responses from online), Megan Berry, announced that she was giving up her post and moving on to found her very own startup, LiftFive in New York City. In her blog post, Ms. Berry states that with her startup, she’ll be helping other companies grow communities and to get the amazing products from these startups into the hands of the right people. LiftFive seems to be gearing up to help startups gain traction. And for Ms. Berry to use her skills from Mobclix and Klout, two well-known and successful startups, it seems that LiftFive will be something worth checking out.

Of course, Ms. Berry’s departure from Klout leaves a hole in the startup for someone to come in and take her place. For the past several years, she’s been one of the main personalities that people who had questions, comments or complaints about the service turned to. It was under her watch that the Klout Perks program started off and eventually hit its stride – with partnerships with large brands like Nike, FOX,  Disney and even Virgin America (probably even working with Porter Gale! What a twist!). And one of her lasting legacies will certainly be the Klout Squad program, which the service established last year to help gather more feedback to better adapt their offerings.

But all is not lost, as the Klout marketing team has grown over the years and there are going to be some great people to take over these programs and help move Klout forward. But it’s probably safe to say that the service lost one of their biggest evangelists.

Good luck to you Megan!

Photo credit: Porter Gale by Kred. Megan Berry by Ken Yeung