India Among The Top 10 Countries Using Twitter – Sysomos Report

Everyone obviously cares about Twitter. If the recent media rage Techcrunch caused by revealing confidential Twitter documents was anything to go by, anything Twitter is now news. We recently told you how Twitter planned to hit a whopping 1 billion users by 2013. Twitter seems to have big plans, but it also seems to be going through an indentity crisis. From discussing varied monetization plans to Google, Microsoft, other Twitter-based acquisitions to modifications to the RT (Retweet), the Twitter Management covered several features, including the problems Facebook was causing it and how to ensure that the Employees are happy. The discussion also raised concerns on overloading Twitter with too much. Techcrunch’s article though is here.

In the report, it also mentions how Google wanted stats on Twitter, but Twitter was reluctant to provide it, and instead gave a growth report with constrained facts. Given the amount of secrecy that the Twitter management wants to protect, (including talks of suing Techcrunch) an independent research on Twitter stats is useful.

Sysomos is a company which does social media analytics. They’ve provided a comprehensive report on Twitter stats, analysing growth, demographics etc. They claim to have analyzed more than 11.5 million Twitter accounts, including the indexing of user profiles and status updates. Location and age information is based on information disclosed in their profile pages. The full report is here. The following is a review of its major points. The data is from their site – the analysis is ours.

Data: Since the beginning of the year, 72.5% of Twitter users have signed up for the service. This includes 22.7% of total users in March and 19.7% in April.

Twitter, though quite old (launched in 2006) has picked up steam very recently. The aplusk v/s CNN showdown, and Oprah mentioning it, not to mention Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton using it quite brought it to the limelight. In Mumbai, the 26/11 incident brought it out into the forefront. As understood, it is conventional media which gives Twitter its popularity. The #iranelection and Twitter’s role in it was covered very well by conventional media. Even today, in India, at least one newspaper will have an article on Twitter on a daily basis.

Data : Based on a sample set of users who disclosed their age, 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25

From Twitter’s own disclosed demographics, around 35% of users are from the age group of 15-19. Though it appears to be in direct conflict with the legendary 15-yr old from Morgan Stanley who was in the news for dishing Twitter, since only 0.7% of users actually declare their age, the report is inconclusive. Also, since this is merely an indication of presence and NOT of activity, any speculation is useless. It’s obvious that teens would have heard of Twitter, and therefore signed up and created accounts. Activity based demographics are what are needed.

Data :

Number of following : 92.4% of Twitter users follow less than 100 people, while 97.8% of Twitter users follow less than 400 people. At the other end of the extreme, 0.94% of Twitter users follow more than 1,000 people.

Number of followers: 93.6% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers, while 98% of users have less than 400 followers. Meanwhile, 1.35% of users have more 500 followers, and only 0.68% of more than 1,000 followers.

The analysis, people don’t really use Twitter too much. The above data reflects that most Twitter users aren’t that active. But the ones who do use Twitter use it really well. For marketers, Twitter implies good audience receptivitiy. The beauty of marketing on Twitter is that your audience is viewing your content by choice, and those who follow a lot of people are active on Twitter. Also, the following graph shows the Follower v/s Following graph showing an almost linear relation for most average users.

Data : As Twitter users attract more followers, they tend to Tweet more often. This is particularly evident once someone has 1,000 followers the average number of Tweets/day climb from three to six. When someone has more than 1,750 followers, the number of Tweets/day rises to 10.

Though the stats are understandable, Sysomos might have confused cause and effect. Their wording seems to imply that followers cause users to Tweet, whereas it is my opinion that the frequency of your tweets urges people to follow you. Also, knowing that you reply to tweets addressed to you is a major reason for people to follow you.

Data: 85.3% of Twitter users update less than once/day; while 1.13% Twitter users update more than average of 10 times a day.
Data : A small group of Twitter users account for the bulk of activity. Sysomos discovered that 5% of users account for 75% of all activity, 10% account for 86% of activity, and the top 30% account for 97.4%

Data : 50.4% of Twitter users haven’t updated their status in the last seven days.

Analysis : This merely reflects the obvious trend. Twitter has a small, really active audience that wants to interact and reach out. Most people aren’t aware of the potential Twitter presents. Hence the disparity. Also, a lot of new entrants get put off since there are very few people following them, and most of them have no clue what to Tweet about. It’s also understandable that the more prolific tweeters have content to tweet about. Unless you’re their friend, most people really don’t care about you doing laundry or a student leaving for college. Hence, it’s best to have a personality on Twitter

Data: When it comes to publishing tools, over 50% of users use applications other than the Twitter website. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com publishing tool with 19.7% market share, while Twitterfon had 4.5% and Twitterfeed 3.8% share.

Analysis : Twitter has great potential to convert several of these applications for profit. A good monetization policy for these policies might be something Twitter is aiming at.

Data: As was expected, the USA has the maximum share of people using Twitter with a 62.14% share.

Analysis : What is interesting is that India is one of the top 10 countries where people are using Twitter. This increases India’s value as an early adopter to global trends. Twitter is also the 15th most popular site in India. Considering use of mobile internet is not nearly as widespread as it could or should be, India’s high ranking is quite surprising. But then again, if #mumbairains could be the leading trending topic on Twitter, Indians obviously do a lot of Tweeting

Data : The Twitter profile cloud.

Analysis : The Twitter bio is an insight into the user. In 140 characters, brevity is the key. Of course, the most recent tweets also reflect the individuality of the user. It is interesting to spot that Marketing is one of the most popular keywords implying that a lot of people see the potential for Twitter as a marketing tool

Social Marketers on Twitter: 15% of Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people identify themselves as social media marketers. More than 78% of social media marketers have more than 20 followers. As well, 35% write more than one update/day, compared with 15% for the overall Twitter population. 65.5% of social media marketers post less than a update a day, compared with 85.3% of the general Twitter population. In addition, 6.3% post two updates a day (vs. 2.8 overall), while 4.3% post at least nine updates a day (vs. 0.17% overall)

Analysis : Social Marketers on Twitter follow the same trend as the general demographic. The variance and disparity is obvious from the data. The distinction : generally more activity. In statistics, using the concept of mean and variance, social marketers have a higher mean, but the variance (how far away data is spread across the mean) is similar. What is questionable here is Sysoms’ interpretation of a social media  marketer. And considering only 15% of those more than 2000 people qualify, that’s 15% of 0.27% which is 0.0405% of all Twitter users, which is poised at 25 million at the end of 2009 which comes down to around 10,000 individuals. The data is questionable and so are all the implied statistics.

Another major issue with most of Sysomos’ demographics and data is the over-reliance on the Bio of the user. Until something better turns up, we are obviously restricted to such methods of data collection. Better indexing might give us more data on the users by analysis their tweets. Which combined with other sociological studies which categorise interests and activity by age could give us more reliable data. Twitter might come close to being the pulse of the internet, with no other platform being such a major source of User Generated Content.

Though Sysomos’ summary itself is extensive, on analysing it, we found only one major point of interest, there sure are many people on Twitter, but not many are active – yet. The other relevant point is the gender disparity. There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%) .

The overall gist of the report. Twitter – good, growing, too concentrated a market, more people need to be more active to improve overall effectiveness of medium (from a purely marketing point of view)

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