Hi,

Naren, co-founder of Tweeple Search here. Here are a few points:

1.The Twitter API is not a practical tool you can use to search for tens of thousands of people. Think rate limits. 2. Results there are not sorted by the number of followers (which is decent marker for influence) 3. Check out Tweeple Search's filters, they are very powerful 4. We can give you a list of influencers based on keywords in content they shared as opposed to keywords in their bios (very tough to do this!) 5. Search is only the beginning. Check out our analysis tools