Klout, the company that positions itself as the ‘standard for measuring influence online’ has just announced a partnership with Virgin America (VA) to offer free flights on the airline’s newest route to those deemed to be influential.

According to PSFK, VA is testing out flights from Toronto in San Francisco to Los Angeles, and as part of the promotion will give Klout-assessed influencers a free round-trip, free wifi on the flight and an invitation to the launch event.

The issue of measuring influence using algorithms and technology faces the same criticism as social media monitoring tools assigning sentiment to what people are saying online. It’s a very difficult thing to do.

Klout, possibly the most comprehensive of services that promises to use Twitter behaviour to assign influence to individuals, uses over 25 variables to measure what is calls True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

According to its website, this means that the size of an individual’s network is calculated by measuring ‘True Reach’ (taking engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts into consideration). ‘Amplification Probability’ is the likelihood that messages will generate retweets or spark a conversation and if the user’s engaged followers are highly influential, they’ll have a high ‘Network Score’.

We’re generally a little wary of services like this here at Reputation Online (even Klout’s comprehensive methods aren’t perfect), but VA’s nod of approval could mean that brands are realising the potential uses of these tools.

Klout can provide a fairly accurate benchmark of those with reach online, but as with most online monitoring, without a human element to truly look at what people are saying and to whom, it’s still a bit of a stab in the air.

It’s unclear whether a third party has been involved – VA’s PR could have even played a part in setting up the partnership in the first place – but if Klout reached out directly, that could mean that the PR contact finds itself a little redundant in this area. We wonder if Klout has started specifically targeting brands directly?