If you've ever wondered how many people actually click on the links you post to Twitter, now you can find out. The micro-blogging site has quietly opened up its analytics tool to average users.

The feature was discovered recently by Christopher Penn, vice president of marketing technology at Shift Communications. "Over the weekend I was playing around with the different ad platforms for social networks and discovered something interesting: my Twitter account was fully enabled for Twitter analytics. So was the Shift Communications account and half a dozen other accounts that I help to manage," he wrote in a blog post.

Penn provided a step-by-step breakdown of how to access your own Twitter stats, which are accessible even if you're not a power user or business client.

To take a peek, navigate to the gear icon atop the page on Twitter.com and select "Twitter Ads." This will take you to the Twitter Advertising page, where there is a link labeled "Analytics" up top. Click that for a drop-down menu (above) that offers access to "Timeline activity" and "Followers."

According to Penn, the "Followers" section gives you an overview of your Twitter history as it relates to those who follow you: a graph of followers over time; details about where you followers live; and how they break down according to gender and interests. When I clicked on that link, Twitter told me I didn't have enough data to generate a report (I have about 2,500 followers vs. the almost 67,000 on the account Penn was using).

The "Timeline activity" portion seems to be more forgiving for those with fewer followers. It lists all your tweets in a grid (click above for larger image), and you see how many faves, retweets, or replies your tweet received. Next to tweets that included a link, it shows you how many times it was clicked. Up top is a graph of the past two weeks that charts your mentions, follows, and unfollows.

When asked about the feature, a Twitter spokeswoman said the company has "been experimenting giving the analytics feature to a small groups of users outside our advertising clients. We've been happy with the response thus far, and will determine next steps after the conclusion of these tests."

So, if you don't see the option on your account, Twitter might not have rolled it out to you just yet.

In any event, the tool appears to be a great way to kill an hour or so poring over your Twitter history and analyzing why you are so popular or unpopular on the micro-blogging site. You can drill down and filter by your "best" tweets, or the top 15 percent of tweets with some level of engagement, or your "good" tweets, which were in the top two-thirds.

You can also download the data from the "Download CSV" button on the top of the page, though as Penn noted, it doesn't include follow/unfollow data.

In other Twitter news, the site today added the ability to combine their tweets, photos, and Vines into one, music-enhanced mashup. The service, dubbed #FollowMe and powered by Vizify, can "instantly set your Twitter timeline in motion," according to Vizify.