Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Twitter users - Twitterriffic or Twitterrible

My twitter feed is a bit lackluster these days. I only have a few account focusing on my passions and my time spent reading updates, filtering direct messages, and retweeting seems to have few peaks and many valleys. Surprisingly or not so surprisingly, I'm still at the top of the twitter user engagement stats as a member of the 17% of registered Twitter accounts who sent a tweet in December of 2009. Now, 17% may seem like a small number but with over 75 million user accounts, that still a whopping 12.7 million people.

Now the question is - what are people tweeting about? Twitter since inception has received its share of criticism especially with the baby-boomers questioning the value of social media. As the new generations (Gen X and later) desire to post their life events on social media becomes even more popular, Webinars, articles, white papers and semaniars are giving almost daily attempting to answer the ever so daunting question of how social media will add value. Value to your buesinss, yoru customers, and your employees.

Where will we be in a year, two years, even 6 months from now? Social media within its own industry has evolved. In fact, the one true variable that I feel will remain constant is the continued change and modification of how we interact with and benefit from social media. Take for example, Twitter's use of lists and regional related feeds or Facebook's ever so popular fan pages covering products to non-profits. Similar to FM going to XM or VHS going to blue ray, social media will surely take on a new form in the near future.

Twitter Stats
Twitter ended 2009 with just over 75 million user accounts.

The monthly rate of new user accounts peaked in July 2009 and is currently around 6.2 million new accounts per month (or 2-3 per second). This is about 20% below July’s peak rate.

A large percentage of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers and about 40% of accounts having never sent a single Tweet.

About 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than ten times.

Only about 17% of registered Twitter accounts sent a Tweet in December 2009, an all-time-low.
Despite these facts, Twitter users are becoming more engaged over time when we control for sample age.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Tweets from Space - Now that's out of this world!

When I initially heard that last Friday astronaut TJ Creamer made history, my mind raced with images of new moons, precious minerals, even E.T. Wrong! In Texas, a sprinkle of snow is considered an arctic freeze and on some media stations, an astronauts tweeting from space is considered a history event.

I will admit that it is pretty cool. Especially for the Twitter.com marketing team who is probably beaming from ear to ear about the publicity.

So is Twitter still a fad? Is it still nothing but spam and porn? Do people waste their time retweets, replying, and direct messaging other members?

Regardless of where you stand on the Twitter-love Scale, one tweet brought Twitter into the spotlight:

"Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s"