Admittedly, Im not a Twitterer however during last weeks Pubcon in Las Vegas, virtually every Social Media session I attended mentioned the micro-blogging service which allows users to send instant updates to a network of friends. Their passion for Twitter was infectious. As such I decided to take a closer look.
This week Ill review Twitter, by the numbers. Note to Twitterers, its not limited to 140 characters!
The Beginning:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came up with the idea in July 2000 when he had an idea to make a more "live" LiveJournal in real-time, up-to-date and from the road.
Twitter began as a research and development project inside Obvious Corp., a start-up formerly known as Odeo Inc., by Noah Glass and Jack Dorsey in March 2006.
Twitters headquarters is in South Park, a San Francisco neighborhood
According to the Twitters Blog, there are 15 employees
The Traffic:
Forrester's survey found that 6% of US online adults use Twitter regularly (monthly or more often)
28% of Twitterers visit 30 or more times in a month
8103.8% increase in traffic Between December 06 and December 07
785: Alexa traffic rank
0.7512%: Percent of global Internet users who visit this site
2,900,750: The number of visits made to the site. This represents a 47,973.4% year over year increase
6.7: The number of pages an average person views on each visit
5:51: The number of minutes an average visitor spends on site; a 392.6% year over year increase
Twitter traffic rank in other countries:
Spain 108
United States 243
Australia 281
New Zealand 296
Netherlands 338
Japan 373
Italy 442
Canada 457
South Africa 469
United Kingdom 478
Top Twitter Cities
Meguro, Japan
Tokyo, Japan
Chiyoda, Japan
Osaka, Japan
Taipei, Taiwan
San Francisco, CA
New York, NY
London, UK
Los Angeles, CA
Toronto, Canada
The Financials:
In July of this year, Twitter announced that it had taken a Series B funding round from Union Square Ventures
December 2007, PE Hub reports that Twitter raised $4.8 million of a $5.4 million round. Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, Naval Ravikant, and Charles River Ventures are also investors in the site
Announced partnerships with high profile events such as the MTV Music Awards and Wired Science however didnt disclose revenues
Twitter is still working on a viable revenue model
The Demographics:
According to Quantcast, Twitter is popular among a more educated audience with 75% have attended College or Grad School
52% Male Users
50% of Visitors are between 35 " 54
24% make over $100K
The typical visitor reads Techcrunch.
The Twitter team won the 2007 South by Southwest Web Award in the blog category. Their acceptance speech: "We'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"
US presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama have Twitter accounts
As of December 10, 2007 Twitdir lists 657 869 Twitterers
Top followed Twit is Scobleizer with over 8,000 followers
Top updater with over 253,000 posts: Omankoxxx
Most favored with more than 28,000 votes: Maybowjing
There are as many as 111 such "Twitter-look-alikes" internationally
Named to Time Magazine/CNN top 50 Best Websites for 2007
At the end of the day, Twitter doesnt seem particularly interesting to me because Im not sure the world is ready, or interested, in receiving granular updates on my day to day musings. Im told to keep an open mind and give it a try. As such, Ive decided to begin my search for a community to call home. So, "What are you doing?"