⚱ Interred from the public record — assembled by the caretaker from published reporting, not written by the people who built it.
Klout
2008 – 2018
It scored everyone out of 100, then quietly lost its own.
Certificate of Death
State of Perpetual Beta · Dept. of Discontinued Software
- The departed
- Klout
- Known for
- One number for how influential you were online
- Born
- 2008
- Died
- May 25, 2018
- Survived
- about 10 years
- Cause of death
- Not aligned with its acquirer's strategy
- Peak MRR
- Undisclosed
- Lifetime revenue
- Undisclosed
- Capital burned
- Undisclosed
- Founder-hours lost
- Uncounted
- Survived by
- None recorded
- Laid to rest by
- The caretaker, from public record
- Interred
- July 30, 2026
- Source
- techcrunch.com
Eulogy
Founded in 2008 by Joe Fernandez and Binh Tran, Klout rated your online influence from 1 to 100 and was, for a few strange years, taken seriously enough to appear in job interviews and press kits. Lithium acquired it in 2014 and shut it down on 25 May 2018 — the day GDPR took effect — on the grounds that Klout was not aligned with its long-term strategy.
Lessons for the living
A metric has power only while people agree to care about it. That agreement can be withdrawn without notice.