Twitter dashboard HootSuite added a new layer of functionality this week that emphasizes the influencers in your social media crowd and further lays the ground work toward becoming a pay service.

Like high school, social media users fall into cliques and everyone wants to hang with the popular kids because they’re the ones that have the most influence on those around them. HootSuite has made it easier to locate and pitch to those popular peeps with their new Klout Score filter.

Located on the home feed tab, the filter allows you to sort your incoming Twitter tweets by scope of influence as determined by HootSuite’s super secret algorithm, aka Klout. You can then use a slider to eliminate people under a particular Klout score, isolating only those people you really want to associate yourself with. In my case, I don’t have anyone higher than a 69 in Klout value with Andy Beal coming in just below a contact who calls herself a “bacon queen.” I’m just saying.

The filter also allows you to sort your tweets by keyword, a tool I found very handy.

Another new feature is the Follower Insights tab. Privacy be gone, as this tab lists multiple photos of the tweeter in question, along with their vital stats and a long list of profile links from around the web including Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, even eBay and Amazon.

I’m not sure where HootSuite is pulling the Insight information from except that the photos appear to be coming from Facebook. My Insight Tab is blank, as are about half the people I tested. It’s not being driven by Klout either, because even though Andy has a very full Insight Tab, the bacon queen, who trumps him in Klout, has an empty tab.

At the bottom of the update, HootSuite reminds us that they’ll be rolling out their pay service in a few weeks. They emphasis that it will be aimed at businesses, with a reference to “unlimited social networks” for those who pony up. I currently run 15 social media accounts on one HootSuite account, so it will be interesting to see if that number will have to be cut should I choose not to pay for the service going forward.

Do you use HootSuite? What do you think of the new features and more importantly, do you like it enough to pay a monthly fee?