Comparison of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are in news for some time in a major way. The discussion is led by research done by AC Nielson and Compete.com. They have reported loss of Twitter charm on the vintage analysis growth trend against Facebook and MySpace. These two Research Companies are very credible sources, and have branding of trust for long. There should be something that’s going, and this is a subject that needs more research and exploration.
BBC has written an article on the loss of Twitter Charm based on a research by Harvard Folks. It says 10% of users generate 90% of the traffic; if this is true it is really an alarming situation.
InRev Analysis Team carried a quick research on 3276 random Tweeters and this is what we have found.
Myths and the analysis findings
1. Most Tweeters Tweet only Once
Out of the sample of 3076 random tweeters, only 242 Tweeters are found to Tweet only once. That constitute for 7% of the portfolio. This 7% also includes people who used Tweeter more frequently in earlier weeks, and could find time for only one Tweet for the week considered.
2. People just throw feeds in Twitter
If the analysis is something to go by, feed does not seem to dominate the Tweet flow. Out of total 169k tweets by the sampled Tweeters, 93% (151k) Tweets are non-feeds. The feeds constitute dismal 7% of the stream. The manual Tweets actually make up most of the Tweet stream.
3. Twitter has useless daily life talks
If we consider the link Tweets as Signal and no-Link Tweets as Noise, overall Twitter has a signal to noise ratio of 47%; meaning for every 100 no-link Tweets, people tweet 47 link tweets.When I consider my Facebook friends, signal to noise ratio in Facebook is significantly lower. Most of them post the Facebook application test updates and general life details.
4. Most people are inactive in Twitter
The above table shows the Tweet frequency behaviour of the individuals. On an average one person Tweets 7 times in a day. This might be lower for the Social Media Analyst or a Marketer, but for a portfolio of all area professionals, the number is not less.
5. Twitter is slowing down, loses the charm
Recent article on venture beat mentioning the loss of Twitter got our attention. It has mentioned two researches by AC Nielson and Compete.com, and those have shown the downfall of the Micro-blogging site to the likes of Facebook and Myspace.
Our research says, the visitors to the Twitter site might be static or falling down, but the reason is not loss to Facebook or MySpace. Instead its due to the Twitter API based Clients.
The result is possible, as compete.com findings are based on Twitter Website use and not on overall Service use. No idea what went wrong with AC Nielson. One possible thing could be biased data sample by us or by them.
If we consider compete.com statistics and add the Twitter client usage, it certainly has edge over Facebook and MySpace. Basically 36% of Twitter use is competing with over 90% of MySpace and Facebook use (assuming 90% of Facebook and MySpace use is through their Website).
Here are the analysis observations and suggestions:
1. Twitter is growing, and growing fast. But the use of Twitter Website is decreasing; Twitter may need to work on bettering the user interface.
2. Twitter Clients are taking away the traffic from Twitter, but they add huge value to the Company. They make Twitter better to use over rivals Facebook and MySpace. The aggressive openness to external use of APIs has actually worked well.
3. Twitter might need to consider partnership with the API based Application builders, and promote them to bring more value to customers and the partners, keeping Twitter’s interest intact.
4. Social Media Marketers need to keep the focus intact with Twitter. It is certainly the big thing now, and can only become bigger thing in days ahead.
About the Research
Analysis done based on random 3276 accounts. The general statistics of the portfolio studied are:
1. Total Tweeters : 3276
2. Max. no of followers : 983k
3. Min. no. of followers : 9
4. Average no. Of followers : 8.4k
5. Total no. Of followers : 2.78m
6. Maximum no. Of Tweets per week : 3016 (one week)
7. Minimum no. Of Tweets per week : 1 (per week)
2 Responses
There are only a few following things which pose any kind of risk to twitter, else twitter has all the attributes to make it the leader in the social media platforms:
1. Cryptic for the beginner
>> Twitter should put up a link called twitter tutorial for beginners so that they don’t give up the first day.
2. Bland and Boring
>> Links to interesting third party applications on homepage such as ‘choose a background’, ‘your rank in your region’, ‘your twitter account value’ etc etc
3. Rampant Spamming
>> Twitter should be very strict with account created for the sole purpose of spamming and they are not very to filter out.
4. Instant Network
>> Users should be shown the tweeps in their city so that atleast they can start with finding people they know and building a local network
… I am sure there can be many more such ideas
what a great analytics and info ;p
THX