Joe Fernandez is a Cuban American businessman most well known for his work on the

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

company

Klout Klout was a website and mobile app that used social media analytics to rate its users according to online social influence via the "Klout Score", which was a numerical value between 1 and 100. In determining the user score, Klout measured the size ...

. He attended, but did not graduate from, the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

. He moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

where he met his wife. He had several jobs at several companies, including Adjoined Technologies, Onboard Information, and Evalulogix, the latter which he co-founded. Fernandez underwent jaw surgery at the age of 30, which contributed to his idea for Klout due to his inability to speak. He started Klout in

, and the website launched on December 24, 2008. On March 27, 2014, it was announced that

Lithium Technologies Khoros, formerly Spredfast + Lithium, is a global customer engagement software company that provides online community management, social media marketing, social media analytics, digital care, and content management software and services to ente ...

had purchased the website from Fernandez. Fernandez revealed on April 17, 2015 that he was stepping down from his position as CEO of Klout, which would then be manned by Lithium. He later joined Lithium as one of its board of directors. As a result of some of the changes made by Fernandez and his staff to the way Klout scores work, Fernandez came under criticism. Particularly, people were upset that their scores lowered after the way scores are determined changed. This led to Fernandez's cell phone number being leaked and him receiving death threats.

Career

Fernandez began his career working as a web developer for Adjoined Technologies from 2000 to 2001, but lost his job after the dot com bubble burst occurred. He met the co-founder by chance, who was a school psychologist, shortly after the

No Child Left Behind The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based education ...

act had passed. The co-founder took issue with how much paperwork he had to do and how it prevented him from helping children. The two of them worked to make the company in order to create software that helps schools deal with paperwork. At its peak, the company's paperwork software was being used in 80% of schools in the United States. While the startup was not a major success, the Arkansas-based company Computer Automation System paid Fernandez and his co-workers royalties for their product. His next job was as a director for research and innovation at Onboard Informatics. Fernandez was a standout at WorldLink media both as a computer programmer and at Cupball. A game created among Joe and three other employees. Joe's ideas and inspiration springboarded the games popularity during the Shaq/Kobe years in Los Angeles. Fernandez's idea for

came from being bedridden during his recovery from jaw surgery in 2007, as he had been using

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

as his means for communication and came up with the idea of measurable influence through this experience. The name "Klout" came as he wrote it down on a piece of paper while delirious from pain relievers. After coming up with the idea for the website, Fernandez quit his job at Onboard Information in order to pursue it. He went to

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

in order to start up the business, using his own money to hire a team to work on the website. Fernandez was in talks with the former owner of Klout.com to purchase the domain name, but was having difficulties coming to terms on price with him. He met with the domain name owner in person to offer him $5,000 for the domain, which he accepted. The website launched on December 24, 2008. Initially, Fernandez handled the scores of Klout users manually by himself. In 2012, Fernandez was able to raise $30 million in funding. On March 27, 2014, it was announced that

had purchased Klout from Fernandez. On April 17, 2015, Fernandez announced that he has stepped down from his position at Klout after it was purchased by Lithium in order to pursue other business ventures. Following his decision to step down, Fernandez joined Lithium as one of its board of directors, replacing former board member Chi-Hua Chien (who also joined the board following the acquisition). In 2015, Fernandez became the co-founder and CEO of Joymode, a Los Angeles-based consumer internet startup.

Impact and reception

Fernandez received some criticism due to the perception that a recent change to Klout's score algorithm included a design that punishes users by reducing their Klout scores if they speak to people with "low influence." There was also a public perception that Klout's algorithm was just a "vanity." Following the change in the algorithm (which caused people's Klout scores to lower), a Twitter campaign called "#OccupyKlout" was created, his cell phone was leaked, and he received hundreds of death threats.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez, Joe 21st-century American businesspeople Living people University of Miami alumni 1977 births