twitreach is a quick Python hack to figure out the marketing concept of 'reach' for a given user. Reach is loosely defined at the audience that might see any of your tweets, and is more than your direct followers, it also includes your followers' followers.
twitreach calculates how many people follow your followers in total, and prints out that number.
twitreach requires at least Python 2.7, and the twitter API library.
Install the library from PyPI with pip
sudo pip install twitter
or your distribution's package manager, e.g., for Ubuntu:
apt-get install python-twitter
twitreach.py [-h] [-c CONFIG] userids [userids ...]
twitreach requires a configuration file, which contains application OAuth information so you can access the Twitter API. To set this up, go to the Twitter apps console https://apps.twitter.com and sign in with your Twitter ID. Follow the Twitter documentation for creating an app and getting the application keys.
Populate a config file. twitreach looks for one in your home directory called .twitreach, or use the -c command line flag to point at another one. An example file with the syntax is included as twitreach.conf.example.
This is a quick hack, so it's wrong in several ways.
Firstly, it's going to overcount, because it doesn't remove duplicates. If someone follows several of your followers, they'll be counted every time. This will artificially inflate your 'reach' number.
twitreach is released under the MIT license. For more information, check out the LICENSE file.