Warning - I try to hold off on my non-technical blog posts till the weekend, but I thought this was kinda cool so I figured I'd share it now. I signed into Klout about a year or so ago. It purports to rank your social influence with a score from 1 to 100. (You can read more about it here.) Frankly, it seemed fun, and I like numbers and charts, but I didn't really think more about it. In some regards it seems dead on - I'm considered influential in ColdFusion and jQuery. In others it seems a bit... off. Apparently I'm also influential in design. Yeah, design.

A few weeks ago I was flying to San Francisco and reading an article in Wired that talked about the company and how it came to be. I thought it was reasonably interesting and told myself to check the site out again next time I had a free moment.

Then I got to the part where they talked about Klout Perks. Apparently, Klout works with companies to share free offers and gifts with people at certain score levels. Let me say right away - I love free crap. Yes, I know that is a bit shallow but I'm a sucker for it. As soon as I could, I logged into the site and checked out the perks. Apparently I had missed quite a few. I had five available to me and while they all seemed kinda interesting, only one really caught my eye, Bing's Summer of Eating promotion. Unfortunately, it wasn't free food, but rather some wine related items and a 10 dollar gift card. I don't drink wine, but my wife does so I figured, what the heck, let me request it.

The perk finally came in this week while I was out of town. The package included an envelope:

With a nicely flattering form letter (ask my friends - I'm all for having my ego flattered):

Here is the back with the code of ethics:

Here was the actual wine-related gift:

That's an opener, decanter, what my wife thinks is an aerator(sp?), and a ring that neither of us could figure out. All the items (and the box) are really well done. So overall, not bad for a freebie.