Admittedly, I’m 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 I’ll review Twitter, by the numbers. Note to Twitterers, it’s 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.
• Twitter’s headquarters is in South Park, a San ¬Francisco neighborhood
• According to the Twitter’s 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 didn’t 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.

Did You Know?

• 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 doesn’t seem particularly interesting to me because I’m not sure the world is ready, or interested, in receiving granular updates on my day to day musings. I’m told to keep an open mind and give it a try. As such, I’ve decided to begin my search for a community to call home. So, "What are you doing?"

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10 smart comments

I recently have given Twitter a go. It is a great tool but for the life of me, I can't seem to think of anything interesting to Twitter about. Besides the fact that no one is following my Tweets anyway. Let me know if you do start Twittering about your daily musings and we can follow each other.

Kristen  ^#

[...] In deze linkdump een blogpost die ik vond met heel wat cijfers over Twitter. [...]

Codeboy.be » Blog Archive » Nutteloze cijfers over Twitter  ^#

If you start to twitter yourself or will like it depends on the person.
But the trick with twitter is to start following other people who you might find interesting. And have a twitter app running in your browser or desktop as background noise. That way you can casually follow what other people are talking about. This will give you the option to respond with your own thoughts and ideas on what they are saying and get some community feeling.

Frans  ^#

Did you already had a look at http://twitterfacts.blogspot.com ?

Bruno  ^#

[...] Social Media By the Numbers: Twitter (tags: twitter development userg) [...]

links for 2007-12-14 – Copypaste Media  ^#

@ Bruno, Yes, I did pass through your site , it's very impressive!!

Tom Tsinas  ^#

Frans, Kristen, when I finally get launch into the twittersphere, you'll certainly be the first I follow!

Tom Tsinas  ^#

I joined Twitter and pretty soon decided I needed a life more than the ability to give people minute to minute updates of what on earth I was doing.

It's an interesting concept, but really what's the point? I could do the same with 20 words on a blog post.

jim  ^#

[...] http://www.nevillehobson.com/2008/02/21/the-continuing-growth-of-twitter/ http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/social-media-by-the-numbers-twitter.html#_jmp0_ http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/02/22/the-growth-of-twitter#_jmp0_ [...]

Some tweets for you | content to be different  ^#

Ok, I hold my hands up I've been caught up in using Twitter. And actually if you want to be at the leading edge of anything it's a must have tool. Yes you get rubbish going on, you know "I ate my tea, it was yuck" sort of stuff. However, you also get nuggets with links to useful material and tools.

Jim Symcox  ^#