A couple of months ago I wrote a post titled Measuring Social Influence with Klout, Kred, Peerindex and Proskore. If you don’t remember the post, you may want to give it another read. In short, there are various services that look at your activity and determine how much influence you wield.

Maybe your score is important to you and maybe it isn’t. Those who are doing marketing online want to know if their message is being effectively delivered. Most services will also tell you the topics on which you are influential. As an example, my score says I’m influential in the area of graphic design. Loyal readers shouldn’t be surprised it is an area of influence for me.

The folks at Kred recently notified their top influencers about the rarefied status of their profiles. For example, they sent me the code for my profile that delivers the graphic at top right indicating I’m in the Top 1% of all Kred influencers. I was certainly humbled to learn the news and admit I’m excited to share the information with all of you. As I understand it, the graphic will update if somehow I find even more rarefied air.

Of course a service like this has to find ways to make money. One way it can do that is to help companies find influencers to share information about their products. You are probably well aware that celebrities can get paid millions to promote a product. In the world of social influence, the payment can come in the form of free products and services. The recipient is never required to say anything about the product or service received and there are no requirements about what needs to be said if you choose to speak.

As an example, I recently received the Pantene Ageless Beauty Collection (shown at right) from Kred. According to their marketing, it is a $75 value though I have seen it available for purchase for $40. I have no expertise at all on these products so I will only tell you I received them for free. I’ll certainly use some of them and will share my opinion with friends. Is this of value to Pantene? I don’t know but they certainly are getting their name mentioned by myself and others who received this free product. Heck, I hope it does help me defy age a bit!

Obviously this isn’t the type of product where I am the perfect influencer. I think you can guess that I’d be a better choice for software, computer hardware or some other flavor of electronics. As these social measurement services are new, the number of companies working with them is limited. I’m sure the types of products and services will continue to expand and I’ll tell you about the ones that interest me the most.