Remember back in the late ’90s when the Internet was still in its infancy and our online lives were identified by the screeching hum of a dial-up connection on a 56K modem, AOL CDs appearing in our mailbox every other week, and those determined, bordering-on-fanatical all-night search binges for lewd photographs of Britney Spears and James Van Der Beek?

Man. They were such simpler times.

Now, our existence online has become so much more complicated. We’re constantly curating not only how we share information but also what we share. Our participation on the social web has become much more strategic because in many ways, our online lives have become our online scoreboard where points are totaled by the number of new Likes, Shares, ReTweets, Mentions, +1s and RePins we generated over the course of the day, week, month, and year.

Perpetuating this scoreboard mentality is Klout – an online social tool that measures a user’s social media influence by their ability to drive action across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.  Klout takes all of this interaction and then scores each user with an enumerated ranking that is supposed to indicate their influence in the online world. Peter Kim happens to be a 55; Jeff Dachis is a 57; and yours truly comes in with a respectable 56.

What does this all mean? Honestly, not a heck of a whole lot – yet.

Since Klout is supposed to identify those among us who wield the most influence online, the idea is that brands can eventually tap into this by using the platform to connect with the power brokers of the niches and sub-cultures and provide them with Perks for their help in amplifying their brands message. So, in theory, the higher your Klout score is, the more likely you are to be sought out by brands and the more goodies you will eventually avail for yourself.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Klout and it has nothing to do with the aforementioned Perks. First and foremost it’s fun, and secondly, even though I understand it’s not an authentic indicator of my social media influence, it has actually taught me how to better optimize my time spent online.

With Klout, it’s the quality of interactions that matter not the quantity, so it causes me to discriminate my content and pass along only the most compelling and interesting information. The better my content is, the more likely it will be shared and commented on by my friends. This, in turn, makes me appear more influential and raises my Klout score (and yes, I recognize that a Klout score is essentially a vanity metric and can be seen as being totally narcissistic, but then again, so is the quest to having perfect hair or amazing abs).

The point here is that we’re all in the business of social business and, as such, we should aspire to be something more meaningful than just noisy and hyper when we’re participating online. Klout, while still having plenty of room to grow and improve upon their scoring metric, is a solid tool to use to improve your social media presence.