The Meaning of Clout

A digital cultural currency

Social Capital is Clout

In the late 1980s, a famed French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, described three forms of capital — economic, cultural, and social. He defined social capital as a consequence of the value of a personal network, quantified by how much their family, friends, and acquaintances can help them gain access to other forms of capital.

For Bourdieu, the value of a person’s social capital depended on the size of the network of connections they could effectively mobilize and the volume of wealth possessed by each of those to whom they are connected.

Klout, Klout, Klout

Fast forward thirty years. In the early days of social media, a company named Klout set out to measure social capital by assigning scores to people based on how influential their Twitter, Facebook, and other social accounts were. The Klout founder, Joe Fernandes, defined clout as a position in which people listen to and care about someone, hence giving them the power to move markets.

And move markets they did — both high-Klout-score individuals and Klout in their own right.

The problem was, Klout made money by helping brands arrange Klout for Perks campaigns, which involved sending free products to people with high Klout scores. They effectively created a new cultural system, elevating the lifestyles of a few and deteriorating the content authenticity, sincerity, and diversity of most. A system so familiar and yet so broken still in 2021.

Clout Values Art

What defines art? Any piece of content, old and new, can be perceived as art as long as it tells a story. In the moment of recognition, either by the author or by the fan, it becomes just that — a piece of art, created by someone and desired by another, to complement a memory, express feelings or beliefs, spark thought, support the author or bring a smile on a sad face.

Determining the value of an art piece is a complex process. Nevertheless, most acknowledged appraisers agree that the author and the work’s provenance are the two most important factors to look at when appraising art. A strong author’s pedigree, as well as being able to unequivocally trace work back to the author (and possibly spot some famous owners along the way), always commands a higher price. Also, fashionable creators who are hot are more likely to sell for a high price.

Therefore, in the modern market, people are interested in what is new and hot, authors who are the next big thing, and established, recognized, brand-name authors. The more clout they have, the more their digital cultural currency, and the higher the value of their art.

The Score Formula

At Clout.art, the world’s first success-curated content collection, we employ clout as a metric to value social media posts for minting. We use a proprietary algorithm behind the scoring rule to calculate and assign a one-of-a-kind score called the Clout.art score to each NFT created on the platform.

The Score formula takes into consideration several factors, including content age, reach, and engagement. It determines the inherent value of an NFT, aligned with the volume of the author’s clout before the market discovers its price.

Read more about Clout.art and the creator’s economy in our whitepaper.
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About Clout.art

Clout.art powers the creator economy of the future by turning the most valuable content, such as your most successful Instagram posts, into unique NFTs. As a microservice, a marketplace, and a staking platform for NFTs minted from social media content, Clout.art is where creators and fans come together to create, grow or exchange social capital through the $PROPS token.