Obama finally beats Bieber in revamped Klout score

SAN FRANCISCO (REUTERS) - Until recently, Justin Beiber was more influential than Barack Obama - at least in the world of Klout, the controversial Web startup that claims to measure people's online influence using an algorithm.

Not any more.

Klout said on Tuesday it has overhauled its Website and rejigged its algorithms, mostly by pulling in data from Wikipedia entries, to better reflect a person's status in the real world.

The move toward calculating offline influence is a tricky but expected step for a company that divides opinion, and gets tongues wagging, like practically no other in Silicon Valley.