The new Facebook-gating system is the latest product from social media marketing startup Involver, which has more than 400,000 brands using its platform.
Involver has teamed up with social influence tracking company Klout to release a set of Facebook applications that brands can use to tailor their Page experiences around fans' Klout scores. The first app is free and is being released to brands Wednesday.
"We've taken Klout's core business and brought it into our platform," says Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Involver senior vice president of marketing and customer success. "The first application is a simple coupon-esque experience. A brand will be able to bring an application out of their Page, configure to deliver content to people above and below certain Klout scores, and then input whatever that content is."
Content can take the form of a new trailer, product, coupon or any other unreleased material.
Involver will also release enterprise and professional-level packages that will give its paying clients deeper customization options so they can more tightly target Facebook users and serve content of their choosing.
"It's 'fan-gating' on steroids using Klout scores," Kaykas-Wolff adds.
The term "fan-gating" is often used interchangeable with "Like-gating," and both refer to a common brand practice of hiding Facebook Page content behind a fan or "like" gate -- when a fan "likes" the page, the actual content is revealed.
In Involver's Klout interpretation on the gate model, a Facebook user's Klout score will determine what type of Facebook content you see and what perks, if any, you get.
Audi USA will be the first brand to test Involver and Klout's influence gate on its Facebook Page. Fans who click to find out their Klout scores will receive a perk -- a custom desktop, ringtone or both -- based on their scores. The process happens entirely on Facebook, with Involver pinging Klout and retrieving the user's score in the background.