Tomorrow’s post was scheduled to be published today. Unfortunately, I endured an experience so traumatic, that venting couldn’t possibly wait for my blog queue to catch up. Last night, I decided to sign up for Kred and PeerIndex to contrast their analysis of social influence from Klout. Without Klout's publicity, each markets itself as a mature competitor with custom algorithms to better quantify social relevance. PeerIndex, being competent at first glance, will avoid the scathing report that follows: Kred is the worst web service I have ever had the displeasure of using.

Between the rudimentary Pinterest layout, tabs, dialog boxes, and micro-sized Vimeo embed, the brazen lack of polish was appalling for a web service meant to judge me. Alas, sign in with a social network? Sure! Except, what is this PeopleBrowsr the permissions keep referencing? Suspicious eye aside, why does Kred employ the only Authorization Request to EVER disconnect me from Facebook in the process? I double and triple checked my address bar before re-entering my password; and even after committing every security sin known to phishing, one of the previously mentioned tacky dialog boxes pops up to request my name and email address, Kred just accessed my twitter account, what is Kred doing with my information if not acquiring my name and email address?! Then there’s the ultra-secure privacy controls, see the PHP code above that actually leaked into my dashboard? Why is Kred not the laughing stock of social influence? The deeper I delved, the more John McAfee references I felt compelled to make.

Do not be mistaken, I’m a pretty computer literate guy, and I still can’t find an exit. I haven’t felt this exposed since browsing Chat Roulette with my webcam on. I mentioned Kred in a tweet explaining my mistake – my mistake was using their service at all – and am yet to receive any help towards deleting my account. Kred, please scrub any remnants of my participation from your jail broken experiment.