Last week, Chris Fay assured us that his new company, PinClout, was nothing at all like Klout.
Klout disagrees. The social metric company’s attorney sent Fay a letter asking that he “immediately cease and desist from all use of or plans to use the PINCLOUT mark and the www.pinclout.com domain name.”
When we spoke to Fay last week, the cofounder said that while he did not think PinClout was anything like Klout, he’d received feedback that said otherwise.
“Some assume we are simply a Klout for Pinterest, and although we do provide a clout score, our business model is quite different, offering a unique value proposition,” he said.
When we followed up on Monday morning, Fay told us things have gotten hectic since he’d gotten Klout’s letter—only three days after PinClout launched. However, it’s helped him to define the startup as something completely different than Klout.
“The whole situation has been crazy, but it’s reinforced our idea of what PinClout does and what what we are,” he told us. “It’s bolstered us and our dedication to going after Pinterest influence and analytics harder than ever.”
Even though he disagrees that Klout and PinClout are similar, Fay said he would be complying with PinClout’s lawyer’s advice and changing the startup’s name.
“We have a few more days before Klout’s expecting us to change the name,” he said. “We’ll be putting out an announcement on the site today or tomorrow.”
When we reached out to Klout last week, the service told us it was aware of PinClout but did not have plans to create a similar Klout metric for Pinterest in the near future. Even so, the service told TechCrunch the cease-and-desist letter was an effort to “protect the brand.”
There’s no word on whether Klout will next be targeting PinPuff, an even newer service, which also provides a Pinterest clout score. Fay told us PinClout was aware of the younger service. He thought the fact that it popped up a few days later meant that he was on to something.
“The more people in this space, the more validation there is of what we’re doing,” he said.