Performance Indicators: Twitter - Titan Interactif Titan Interactif

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We talk a lot about the digital revolution that traditional media is being put through: upheaval, readership and audience shrinkage, bankruptcy, pay walls… This post is part of a major update to a host of previous ones published in 2009 and 2010 on this blog.

What’s the situation really like in 2011? Traditional media are not dead – not yet at least. But many newcomers have made their entrance on the marketing landscape in the last 10-15 years. Let’s look at the situation with Twitter a bit:

Quick description: What are you doing (right now)?

Twitter was created in March 2006 launched in July 2006 by Jack Dorsey

Twitter in plain English:

Reach

190M accounts generate 65M tweets daily (Media Post 2010/06/08) = less than 1/3 of a tweet per user per day = many watchers and occasional posters
50M accounts are considered active (Twitter) worldwide, 300,000 new members daily! (Mashable 2010/09)
- 75% of users never visit Twitter.com but use 3rd party applications (Danny Brown)
- 180M UVs monthly
600M daily searchs via Search.Twitter.com, 3B call made to their API daily
- In 2010, 26 million Americans, 1 in 7, will use Twitter (eMarketer)
- Twitter’s growth over the past 12 months was 1222%, growing from 1,466 million in November 2008 to 19,379 million in November 2009 (comScore)
- The top 3 personalities on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more fans combined than the entire population of Austria, Ireland, Panama and Norway.
- The more connected devices (to the Web) you own, the more likely you are to use Twitter (PEW). 54% of people with 4 or more devices update their status daily, 28% for those with only 3 devices, 19% with 2 devices and 10% with 1 device.
- 42% of Quebecers are aware of Twitter. (SOM Branchez-Vous)
183,000 Russian accounts (Yandex)
- 60% write every day
- 67% include a link
- 150,000 Tweets daily, 5% are retweets
87% of Americans 12+ who of Twitter in 2010 vs 88% who know of Facebook (Edison Research).
7% of Americans 12+ use Twitter in 2010 vs 41% who use Facebook (Edison Research).
- 13% of Americans 18+ are users (Pew 2011/01)
- 50% of them use it from a mobile device
80% of accounts are inactive (RJMetrics 2009), 17% tweet only once a month.
- 5% of users generate 75% of total activity
7% of Americans regularly use Twitter (eMarketer 2011/02), 9% of the online population
- 21% of members are active
- 22.5% of users generate 90% of all tweets

User profile

The average age of Twitter users is 31
The Average are of the American user is 39.1 (Pingdom)
33% of users are between 25-34 years old, 19% between 35-44, and 18% 12-17 (Jean-Nicolas Reyt)
- 39% have 3 or more devices (computers or mobile devices), 85% connect with at least 2 separate tools
Regular users are mostly women at 57% (InformationIsBeautiful.net)
9% of SMBs use Twitter (BIA/Kelsey research)
42% of users are between 18-34 years old, 28% between 35-49, 17% are over 50, 13% are between 12-17 (Solutions Research Gr.)
2% of Quebecers use Twitter (SOM Branchez-Vous)
0.7% of total users have more than 1000 followers (Agent Wildfire)
64% of Twitter are 35+ years old (Pingdom)
60% are outside the US (Danny Brown)
14% of male Internet users use Twitter vs 11% of women (Pew Research 2011/01)
- 18% of Internet users between 18 and 29 are Twitter users, 14% for 30-49 year olds and 8% for 50-64.
- 19% of Hispanics are users vs 25% of Africans Americans and 9% of Whites
- 28% of college educated people are users
- 15% of urban dwellers are users vs 14% in the suburbs and 7% rural

Usage

According to Sysomos, 5% of users generate 75% of total Twitter activity. Tuesday is the busiest day of the week followed by Wednesday and Friday.
19% of Americans use Twitter regularly (PEW)
Visits to the site increase 2000% between August 08 and 09 (HitWise US).
80% of Twitter usage is via a mobile device. People update their status constantly, from anywhere. Can you imagine how quickly a bad client experience can spread?
60% of users use only from their computer, 27% tweet daily, 46% check their updates daily (eMarketer 30Octobre2009)
85% prefer tweeting from their computer worldwide (eMarketer 16Novembre2009)
54% of bloggers publish a post or tweet daily.
27% of users use an application to Tweet, not Twitter.com
Twitter users click more on ads and on social networks (20% vs 9%) – (Interpret Study)
Approx 3 million tweets are sent daily
2B tweets monthly (Twitter 2010/06) vs 50M daily (2010/01) vs 2.5M (2009/01)
- That’s 600 tweets per second
- 600,000 tweets daily are shared or retweeted containing brand information (Penn State Study) = 20% of 3M published daily
- 44,481 tweets per minute (DBA Worldwide)
- 64M tweets daily (DBA Worldwide)
25% = increase in time spend on Twitter per user. (Conseils Marketing)
44% of people who share content do it on Facebook, ahead of Twitter 29%, Yahoo 18% and MySpace 9% (TechCrunch 2010/02)
50% of tweets are in English. The rest is in one of 40 languages: Japanese 14%, Portuguese 9%, Malaysian (6%), Spanish (4%). French is only about 1%. (Semiocast 2010/02)
Quebec companies mostly use LinkedIn (39%) followed by Twitter (26%), RSS (21%) and blogs (20%). (Centre d’études en Communications Marketing)
85% of Twitter users use 2+ devices to connect to the Internet (Edison Research 2010).
- 73% send many SMS daily
50,000+ 3rd party apps access Twitter (Danny Brown)

56.7% of RTs include a link, vs only 19% of all tweets (Zarrella)
RTs are mothly an afternoon thing (14h à 21h) vs tweets which increase in volume throughout the day, mostly concentrated from Wednesday to Friday (Zarrella).

7% of Americans use Twitter, vs 41% use Facebook (53% in Quebec 2010/02) (Jean-Nicolas Reyt)
- 75% of users have tweeted 4x or less since joining
- 65% connect daily vs 50% for social networks on average
- 46% for whom Twitter is their breaking news media of choice vs 42% for TV and 4% for daily newspapers

47% of traffic on Twitter is for general news, 10% for tech content, 10% for celebrities, 6% for movies, 4% for tips (Chitika 2010/03)
18% of UK users tweet from their bed (Jean-Nicolas Reyt)

Marketing usage

Twitter (17%) is the 3rd highest valued social tool for marketers behind LinkedIn (26%) and Facebook (23%) (Unisfair).
Twitter 101 for business (Thanks to PatrickLauzon)
10% of visits to NYTimes.com come from Twitter – it’s no longer an option.
1 out of 350 visits to a website in the UK come from Twitter according to HitWise.
99% on online retailers have a Twitter account
Twitter users are more likely to follow a business than other social networks users (20% vs 11%) – (Interpret Study)
44% of users have recommended a product on Twitter (Vivaki Nerve Center)
39% of users have discussed a product on Twitter (Vivaki Nerve Center)
48% of users that have seen a brand on Twitter have searched it in a search engine, 34% searched it on a social network (Vivaki Nerve Center)
20% of Tweets are invitations to more info on a product, answers or questions related to a brand (Penn State)
9% of US SMBs have used Twitter in the last year (BIA/Kelsey), this climbs to 16% for those who’ve existed only for 3 years or less, but falls to 2% for those that have been around for over 11 years.
Dell nears 7$ million in sales directly attributable to Twitter, without any particular strategy (active since 2006 (Huffington Post)
Twitter and Facebook exert an influence (28%) on Holiday shopping (comScore) (merci @lucdupont)

42% have discovered or learned about a new product Twitter (Edison Research 2010).
- 41% have shared product opinion on Twitter
- 31% have asked for someone’s opinion about a product on Twitter
- 28% use Twitter to find deals
- 34% would no longer use Twitter if they added advertising to streams (it’s already being done)
  - 66% wouldn’t change their habbits.
35% of businesses search for job candidates on Twitter before hiring (The Creative Groupe / USA Today mars 2010)
37% of Twitter users would bing from a brand they follow vs 27% by email and 17% on Facebook (ExactTarget eMarketer 2010/09)
- 33% of Twitter users would recomment a brand they follow, vs 24% for email subs and 21% for Facebook fans
Lady Gaga (the most important account in 2010/11) reaches more people than the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and New York Times combined (DBA Worldwide)

11% of American online buyers regularly consult Twitter (ForeSee Results 2010)
88% of SMB marketers in the US use Twitter, their #1 social media (Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2010)

Twitter Search in plain English: