This entry is cross-posted on our Kred Blog.

Transparency is one of Kred’s touchstones. We think its important that everybody be able to instantly understand how their scores are calculated and - more crucially - what they mean.

In our post yesterday, we discussed how we arrive at an Influence score. Here we’ll discuss the distribution of Kred Influence scores to provide a greater context for your score. After all, a score without context is like trying to understand whether a person is dressed appropriately without knowing the weather or the event they plan to attend.

Distribution of Kred Influence scores

To create context for Kred scores, we generated a report on the scores of people who have Kred Influence greater than 200. (We started at 200 because people above that score have a history of activity, connections and interactions.) We then divided everyone into ‘bands’ bounded by Influence scores of 50 [(201-250, 251-300... 951-1,000)] to build a distribution chart.

Note that all the Influence scores discussed here are for Global Kred, meaning for a user’s Influence across all of Twitter. Scores and distributions within interest-based Communities may vary.

About 42% of the people in the group we analyzed have Kred Influence scores between 201 and 450, 37% between 451 and 600, and 21% of above 600. At the top end of the chart, only 0.1% have Global Kred over 800.

At this writing, fewer than 200 people have the maximum Global Kred Influence Score of 1,000. Yes, Justin Bieber is one of our 1,000-point scorers. Other people who are well known for their influence on Twitter, like Lady Gaga, Ashton Kutcher and Barack Obama, are close behind.

For quick reference, percentile ranks of Kred Influence scores are spelled out in the chart below.

The charts in this post were created from our data on November 11, 2011. We anticipate that there will always be changes in how scores map to percentiles, though the basic shape of the chart will likely stay the same. We will continue to update on our data periodically.

What does this mean to you?

Our mission with Kred is to let anyone understand their influence and find people who are influential about their interests. By doing so, we hope that this enriches your social media experience.

If you feel that a score is incorrect, we are happy to audit your Kred any time. Just click on the ‘Request Score Audit’ at the bottom of any page on Kred.ly and we’ll be happy to review it.

Influence measurement is still in its early days; we think of it as the equivalent of DOS to today’s modern operating systems. We welcome your suggestions for improving Kred. If you have an idea or would like to suggest other studies of our data you would like to see, leave us a comment on this post or tweet us at @kred.