• Mashable, Wednesday, June 23, 2010 12:43 PM

Who says Twitter is a pointless pastime? In Toronto, Virgin America is giving free flights to Twitter users whom it deems "influencers." To determine a user's influence, the airline is relying on Klout, an analytics service that tracks users' influence on Twitter based on variables like the quality and number of followers and retweets. The offer includes free round-trip airfare (Wi-Fi included) between Toronto and San Francisco, or Los Angeles between June 23 and August 23.

As Mashable notes, Virgin isn't requiring influencers who take the free flight to "do" anything, be it tweet the experience or participate in press coverage. "We do not want to 'buy' your tweets," Klout writes in a blog post. "You are receiving the product because you are influential and have authority on topics related to the product. This is a more targeted form of receiving a sample while shopping at the grocery store. You are welcome to tell the world you love the product, you hate the product or say nothing at all."

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