As more and more companies and individuals consider the importance of social networking, there is a movement to measure social influence as a measure of a candidate’s power.
Klout is the leading website for measuring social influence. What it does is link to your social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, your WordPress blog, etc.) and has an algorithm that allows them to generate a number.
I will tell you that there is a lot of debate about the accuracy of the number they generate. I will however tell you that although there is debate about the validity of the middling number, there is now question that those with high rankings are very influential.
What this means is that if you are someone in sales, marketing, SEO, web design, public relations or other fields, you need to be looking for ways to beef up your presence and influence online.