Want to see just how influential your Twitter-based thoughts really are? Check out twInfluence, a new tool that uses the Twitter API gauges the reach of your Tweets and the people who read them.
The service, boasting about 3,500 users thus far, has an interesting approach: It analyzes not only the number of followers you have, but also the quality of those followers.
“Imagine Twitterer1, who has 10,000 followers — most of which are bots and inactives with no followers of their own. Now imagine Twitterer2, who only has 10 followers — but each of them has 5,000 followers. Who has the most real “influence?” Twitterer2, of course,” it explains.
As far as privacy, the site’s FAQ promises that no information outside of search results and statistics are stored.
So who’s among the most influential? Barack Obama, not surprisingly, has the top spot when it comes to reach. Other familiar names hitting high include Jason Calacanis (#2), The Scobleizer (#3), and Dave Winer (#13). Here’s the full top 15:
The site also analyzes velocity (how quickly you’ve gained quality followers) and social capital (how many high-influence people follow you), and the results in those categories are quite different from the reach list above.
twInfluence looks like an interesting tool, and one that’s sure to generate some competitive comparisons. Care to share where you landed on the rankings?