“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.

The Rise and Fall of Klout - This piece from Slate looks at likability and our obsession to quantify it. This has led to the rise and fall of Klout. The piece argues that Klout didn't fail because its goal was flawed. In fact, it aimed to deliver on something many advertisers were clamoring for. It's failure was in execution.

The Sharing Economy Goes to Work - LiquidSpace CEO Mark Gilbreath shares what he sees as the next big move in the collaborative economy: corporate services. The idea of sharing work services gives workers the mobility and choice they've come to expect as consumers.

The Push Against Disruption - Derek Khanna tells the story of Outbox, a service that would allow users to digitize postal mail and filter out the junk mail. The service took off with positive press coverage, but the model depended on the post office. The Postmaster General, however, put a stop to it. It was too disruptive and it cut out the postal service's most valuable customers, junk mailers.

Slow User Growth and Twitter - Tom Webster digs into the stats around Twitter's slowing user growth and the hype around Twitter's decline. He finds that Twitter growth has slowed, and it has been passed in popularity by Instagram and Google+. The space has gotten more competitive, so Twitter needs to evaluate what has changed in the space and capitalize on it. It's not going anywhere, but it has work to do.

Finding Your Value to Tech Companies - PrivacyFix has created an app using publicly available information to determine how much revenue companies like Facebook and Google generate for each user. The information is based on privacy settings and behavior. It then shares what settings you can change within your own profile to tighten up personal privacy.