Flying With Fish #7 – 50 Most Influential Travel Co. Online
Klout.com has become the standard for social media rankings by the numbers, billing itself as “The Standard For Online and Internet Influence”. Klout scoring is based on a complex alogarithm that factors in nearly 40 variables to measure an online entity’s true reach, amplification probability and network score. Klout’s numbers fluctuate along the scale of 1 to 100, but like most aspects of social media … consistency is key.
Well not long ago, The 50 Most Influential Travel Related Companies Online list was compiled and scored. Initially, Flying With Fish was ranked #9. I have to admit, I was thrilled with #9!  At that time Orbitz was #1 and The Travel Channel was #10.  The other day Flying With Fish’s ranking was #8 … even better … but today with the recalculated Klout Score just a week or so since the original list was released, Flying With Fish has moved to #7.
#1 is still Orbitz, The Travel Channel has moved into #8, Southwest Airlines is #9 … and I am way ahead of The New York Times Travel, JetBlue, United Airlines and others.
I feel a little bad for being ahead of Southwest, JetBlue and United. I know the folks who handle their social media … and I know they have budgets for social media while I am just a one-man shop with a MacBook Pro and iPhone and no budget at all.
So folks … thank you for all your support!
Below is a screenshot of the ranking from earlier today.
Happy Flying!
(Click Image To Enlarge)
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I don’t want to burst your bubble, but Klout isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Have you looked at the basis for their rankings? Their Twitter rankings are hopelessly out of date. They claim that I am influenced by people I have not followed or interacted with online in the last six months. And Twitter user @merredith mentioned the other day that Klout says she influences an individual who died 3 years ago. Worth looking critically at whether this really means anything.
Having said that, you have “klout” with this reader. Your blog is great (I don’t a number to tell me that!).
I love your blog, and don’t read any other travel blogs. So you are #1 with me.
Typo: “Complex logarithm” should be “complex algorithm”.
I agree with Andy up there. I haven’t been following Mashable or TechCrunch for months, yet they are listed as my top influencers. It says I have 110 followers, when I have 196, which is sad, because follower count is one of the few things that is listed in the API in a tweet from any user.
That being said, you are one of the few travel blogs I read.