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Posts Tagged ‘numbers’

The quest to decipher just how many actual users there are of Twitter continues. Yesterday at the Chirp conference being held for Twitter developers, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the group that the number of registered users (let’s call them accounts) is 105 million. That is considerably more the 65 million that comScore has estimated the number at. Macworld reports Twitter has 105 million registered users, with 300,000 new users signing up every day, Stone said, opening Twitter’s Chirp conference at the Palace of Fine Arts before an audience of just shy of 1,000 developers. That user figure is more than a recent estimate from comScore, which pegged Twitter’s user base at 65 million. The Twitter API (application programming interface) fields 3 billion requests per day, Williams said. “That’s bigger than all but a couple of Web sites in the world,” he said, claiming it makes Twitter “about the same size as Yahoo.” He said the service has grown 1,500 percent each year on average since “Twitter Inc.” was founded three years ago this month. The service is also fielding about 19 billion searches a month, Williams said, which compares to about 90 billion for Google. Those are big numbers for sure. The question is just how many of those registered users represent actual active Twitter users. I know of many accounts that sit dormant to protect a brand or have been abandoned by people who caught Twitter fever then determined that there was no value in the service for them. I like to caution in these instances that the hyper usage levels that are seen my social media “experts” and “gurus” and (gulp…) “ ninjas ” are not reflective of how much the service is used by folks that are not in the industry. Then there is the question with regard to using Twitter as to how much traffic is seen directly on the Twitter site vs. third party apps like TweetDeck etc. Conventional wisdom has been that the traffic is a 50/50 split but Stone stated that it more like 75/25 with the larger number representing those who do not use the Twitter site to use Twitter. You would expect him to make the numbers appear that way to show how much potential growth there is for the actual site traffic thus giving advertisers the impression that the future is much brighter for sure. Other tidbits revealed at the conference include the production of an Android app, the 100,000 downloads of Twitter’s official Blackberry app (which is pretty good, I must admit) and the purchase of a one man company which created what will be the basis of the official iPhone app that is on the short term horizon as well. Since this was being said at a developer conference the Twitter execs who were speaking tried to put nervous Twitter developers at ease. A Reuters report says Twitter sought to reassure independent software developers at the conference that the company’s moves to add its own home-grown features and versions of the service would not shut out the more than 100,000 third-party programs that have been built to work alongside and enhance Twitter. “Twitter is truly a collaboration and that is not changing,” said Williams. But Stone said Twitter would continue to fill in holes it sees in the main product by developing new features and acquiring companies. “I anticipate a few more” acquisitions this year, Stone said. “I don’t know if we’re going too crazy. But there’s certain things that we need to get done and we want to get done fast, and there’s certain things we can take our time building.” Maybe those in attendance started setting their eyes on being like that one-man show that was purchased by Twitter. Of course, with over 100,000 developers out there trying to cash-in maybe a lottery ticket would be just as effective to generate income.

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Twitter Accounts Cross the 105 Million Mark

While it’s not a surprise that social media is growing it can often be a bit stunning to hear some ‘actual’ numbers to back up the assertions and assumptions that the industry itself can be prone to making. The latest data that tells us about who is involved in social media comes from Arbitron and Edison Research via MediaPost . What it shows is that the young crowd has greater saturation in who has profiles but the older age groups are seeing large percentage increases in social networking profiles. This should make marketers happy because the older the person the more money (supposedly) there is to buy stuff. Overall, though, about half of the people in the US aged 12 and older have at least one social network. Here’s a picture for you. You can get a copy of the Arbitron presentation here . Another point of interest in the study, which was done in January on the phone with 1,753 participants includes the following insight into the importance of TV vs. the Internet. While the percentage growth of use in social networks is on the climb in older Americans it is obvious that if faced with a choice between the Internet or TV, the older you are the more tied to TV you are. With so many people tied more and more to their social networks online there is plenty of work for marketers to do. What will be the most important task is to make sure that marketing programs are never weighted too heavily toward one medium or another. It is not likely that an online only approach will yield optimal results and the same holds in the reverse. So while the numbers may be interesting what will be most interesting is the response by those trying to reach consumers through these channels. How do you see this playing out between the Internet and TV in this decade? When we look back in 2020 will the Internet be the king or will there still be a balance? We would love to hear your thoughts. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

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Research Shows Social Media and TV Importance By Age

One of the many nagging questions that many online marketers face is trying to show just how well search ads do as compared to social media ads. Well, beginning on April 12, Clickable is giving advertisers the ability to compare their search ads’ performance against that of ads on Facebook. If this works as advertised this could provide some valuable insight into just how well ads on social networks perform. TechCrunch provides some more details It will soon be possible to compare the performance of search and social ad campaigns side by side. Clickable, the ad management platform that lets search marketers measure and track the performance of their online marketing campaigns across different search engines and advertising networks, will be adding Facebook Ads as an option on April 12. What that means is that an advertiser buying pay-per-click ads on Google can test the performance of those search ads against pay-per-click ads on Facebook targeted to particular social demographics. Clickable customers will be able to create, upload and manage Facebook Ads through Clickable. Using the Facebook Ads API, Clickable has made it easier for advertisers to see not only how their search campaigns compare to each other but also how search does vs. at least one social media outlet. This could be risky business for Facebook. Of course, it could turn out to be an incredible boost as well. What will determine that direction will be the numbers. How will Facebook ads fare against search ads? People come to a search engine for information first and anything else that happens along the social side of life is a bonus. People, however, are going to Facebook to be social for the most part. As a result, the mindset of the user is different with respect to receiving advertising. I know that personally, I rarely give Facebook ads a glance. There is not a ton of variety in the ads I am offered and they are often just way off the mark with regard to my needs and tastes. As a result, I have developed a classic case of Facebook ad blindness. I know where they will appear in the layout and I have, on some level, just blocked them out. Occasionally something will catch my eye but not often. Of course, that is just one person’s experience. What about your experience with Facebook ads? As an advertiser how effective are they for your investment? As a Facebook user, how engaged are you in the ads offered on the site? In your opinion, how different are the two mediums, search and social, when it comes to advertising?

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Now Compare Your Search Ads to Facebook Ads Performance

Hitwise has been blogging its stats for over a month showing Facebook beating Google in all kinds of ways. At the beginning of February, they said that Facebook sent more downstream traffic to news sites than Google News . Last week, they had two such stories: Facebook eclipsed Google in terms of traffic and loyalty to those downstream news sites . But a closer look showed that the traffic numbers looked a bit . . . massaged . Facebook’s numbers include all their traffic and capabilities—search, video, interaction, etc.—while Google’s numbers only represented Google.com pages, not YouTube or Gmail or Google News or any of their other properties (which compete directly with Facebook in many respects). And the returning visitor rate, shown below, may also be suspect, as Danny Sullivan observed in his stat rant on the subject . Like with the earlier report, the numbers for Facebook, an integrated platform, reflect the total usage of the site, while the numbers for Google focus only on one of its properties. With the full data, Danny points out, Google handily trumps Danny also points out that Hitwise’s data, obtained from ISPs rather than analytics, can’t indicate actual referrers —hence the names “upstream traffic” and “downstream traffic.” Hitwise can only see what sites users visited before and after—not whether there’s any real relationship between those sites (as there would be in a link/referrer relationship). It’s possible that people visit Facebook.com and then CNN.com (or whatever) separately, via direct or type-in traffic—and Hitwise would have now way of differentiating that visit from one where someone followed a link. The reason Hitwise loves to blog about this is most likely that it’s an attention-grabber. Suddenly the most popular social network in the world looks like the Little Engine that Could Unseat Google, and the links and headlines come flowing in. Statistics with an agenda should be viewed with skepticism indeed. While Facebook may be the best-positioned website to eclipse Google, the numbers aren’t there yet unless you’re willing to use fuzzy math. And even if they were, would that really mean the beginning of the end for Google? Couldn’t Facebook and Google peacefully co-exist? What do you think? Is Facebook really close to beating Google? Why does Hitwise want that to be the case? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Why Does Hitwise Want Facebook to Kill Google?

There are certain things that anyone can hear and automatically say “I don’t think that’ll work very well” without doing any real research. You hear something and you have a visceral reaction that just makes you go with your gut because it makes sense. Even in those kind of no-brainer situations it helps when your “gut” is validated by a reputable source who actually did a little research. The latest case of this occurrence comes from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. As reported over at ars technica the prestigious group has done the research to help us all say that our collective gut is right on the money when it comes to paywalls for news: the idea pretty well sucks. Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there’s a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.” Ouch. Last I heard, butterflies never go back into their cocoons. Boy it would be just like some mean old news guy like Rupert Murdoch to force a butterfly to do something so unnatural. Some of the numbers that support this claim are that 81 percent of Internet users say they are fine with online ads of it keeps the content free. A surprising number of people click on these ads as well with 21 percent saying they do and the numbers going up to 39 percent when the level of someone’s Internet usage is high. On the downside, however, is the admission by these folks that they actually like ads because they “find them easy to ignore”. Ouch again. The combined effect of lower ad impact and revenue has led many news sites to look for new ways to make some money, but the Pew report is not very optimistic on the prospects for other business models. Only seven percent of Americans said they would consider paying for news content and most said they would simply look for content elsewhere if their favorite site put up a pay wall. The likelihood of hybrid offerings is increasing because the first company of any relevance that fails while trying a paywall only approach rather than the traditional free approach will get beat up pretty bad. Although the pressure for revenue is severe the downside of actually acting on all this paywall talk could be keeping folks away from it. With only 7% of Americans saying that they would pay for content is seems hard to believe that there is any room for this model moving forward. What’s your take? Please be sure to comment in our new “pay per comment” section. You’d pay for that opportunity wouldn’t you?

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Pew Study Affirms Paywalls a Bad Move