Twitter is a popular social networking site which allows its account holders to publish short messages which can be seen instantly across the world by other users.
Twitter's ability to connect users instantly to friends and even celebrities has fueled its intense popularity.
Several Twitter users, especially celebrities, are actually influencing the site with their hoards of followers.
Users are now able to measure the influence of their messages or tweets and how they affect other users using Klout.
Klout is a southern California based operation that was founded just last year.
The company's mission, according to its website, is to measure a Twitter user's influence on the social networking site.
The company keeps tracks of information and data regarding a user's personal influence and provides them with the information and ways of interpreting and using it.
A company's score is a numerical representation of a Twitter user's influence.
The score goes from one to one hundred with higher numbers equaling a greater strength.
A user with a stronger score has a higher chance of influencing other Twitter users to engage in certain actions such as clicking on a link or re-posting a message.
A score is scoped by deciding a number of various factors.
A user's reach is how often their tweets are seen by other users.
If you're followed by a user with several thousand friends and rarely post about the same subjects, then it's likely you have only a small amount of influence over them.
But if your followers are generally reciprocated and posts are re-tweeted than your influence over Twitter will be significantly higher.
Another factor in the scoring method is how influential the users are who message and re-tweet you.
Even users who simply follow you can affect the strength of your influence.
Klout compiles all of this information and more when measuring a user's score.
Programs like these can be extremely useful.
They cost nothing and are therefore an extremely beneficial new way of advertising.
The tool allows advertisers and companies to accumulate a list of Twitter users that are more likely to be attracted to certain products and services.
The site, itself, has most recently become a very useful tool for companies to find and market to target audiences.
It won't be long until every Twitter user has a Klout account as well.
Advertisers and other companies are already jumping on board the project.
The ability to market directly to key audiences without spending millions of dollars is soon going to become the norm in the ad world.