Are you on Klout? I enjoy following it to see how my number changes over time as I experiment on Twitter and Facebook (my Klout is higher than Phil’s by the way).  Those are the two social networks I’ve connected to Klout, but there are 10 networks in all that Klout will measure for you. It all started with Twitter, but it’s really grown in the last several months. We talked about that on one of our past episodes.

We also talked about social media and politics back in May. As you know, Canada had a federal election on May 2nd of this year, and Twitter played a major role.

We’ll no doubt discuss these things for the provincial election in October here in Ontario, but that’s a post for another day.

I want to say, that on the federal political level in this country, there has been a very interesting development on Klout regarding the late NDP leader Jack Layton.

Back during the election campaign, Layton made a lot of waves during the English language leader’s debate (#db8 if you remember that night!) for using the phrase “hash tag fail” in one of his comments. The word “bling” in reference to gang lifestyle also quickly became a trending tweet that night. His Klout, at the time, was not quite as high as Stephen Harper, who, if I remember correctly, was second behind Michael Ignatieff (but only by a point or two) but in the last month, that really shifted.

A lot of people really liked Jack Layton, and when he tweeted his then final tweets in July, his Klout score jumped a full 10 points. One of the things I found interesting was that Stephen Harper’s Twitter account ALSO exhibited a significant jump on that same date.

Your support and well wishes are so appreciated. Thank you. I will fight this – and beat it.

Everything settled down for a time, and then Monday we learned the news that Jack Layton had lost his battle with cancer and passed away. His Klout score increased another two points and, again, so did Stephen Harper’s! In fact, all of the federal leaders and interim leaders’ Klout scores increased as they tweeted their condolences to the friends and family of Mr. Layton.

The Prime Minister has certainly taken to social media in the past few months. His Facebook page has over 60,000 likes and he has 163,000 followers on Twitter, more than any other Canadian politician.

But still, Klout considers Jack Layton the more influential person. At least it has in the last month.

And not only that! Social media has played a very large role in the remembrance of Jack Layton as well! There have been Facebook groups galore. Campaigns to leave porch lights on, memorials, candlelight vigil events all over the country and even a petition to have the CN Tower lit up in NDP Orange on the date of his funeral. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of tweets, and the thousands of pictures and videos that have been shared in the last 48 hours. This man’s passing has created a mini revolution online.

I don’t think we’ll see this level of social interaction regarding a political figure in Canada again for a long time.

-Ted.