KARACHI: US President Barack Obama surpassed teen sensation Justin Bieber to become the most influential figure in virtual world.
Klout, the web venture that claims to measure people’s online influence using an algorithm, made the announcement Tuesday.
The website that earlier measured people’s influence using social media data, overhauled its website to pull in data from Wikipedia entries and other databases to better reflect one’s status in the real world.
The overhaul decision was made owing to the criticism that pointed to Bieber as an example of why quantifying online influence was irrelevant.
Chief Executive Joe Fernandez said, "We heard the common complaint, Klout's interesting, but what about people who are influential in the real world?”
The teenage pop icon, with Twitter army of 26 million ‘Beliebers’ who retweet his every word, had a Klout score greater than the US President.
As a result of the new algorithm, which takes into account a person’s offline influence as well, President Obama’s Klout score has finally topped Bieber’s four year dominance.
"Barack Obama is hugely important," Fernandez added, "He's referenced everywhere, and that gives him a higher score.”
”The social media analytics company now sucks in 12 billion bits of data every day from social networks including Facebook, Google Plus and Tumblr, up from 1 billion just months ago. As part of the revamp, most users will see a bump in their scores,” Fernandez added.
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