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Contents

1. Twitter’s Hockey Stick-Like Growth in 09
2. Twitter Self-Disclosed Age Demographics
3. Number of People Followed
4. Number of Followers
5. Followers vs. Following Activity
6. The More Followers, the More You Tweet
7. Tweets/Day
8. Twitter Activity
9. How Active Are Twitter Users?
10. Twitter Activity By Day Of Week
11. Twitter Activity By Time Of Day
12. Publishing Tools
13. iPhone Users on Twitter
14. Top Twitter Countries
15. Fastest Growing Cities
16. iPhone Users on Twitter
17. Most Common Keywords in Twitter Profiles
18. Insights on Social Media Marketers Using Twitter
    1. Average Tweets per Day
    2. Number of Friends
    3. Number of Followers
    4. Most Common Keywords in Profile of Social Media Marketers
19. Twitter Communities
20. Methodology
21. About Sysomos

Related Articles

• A Look at Twitter in Iran
• Twitter Traffic Spikes on News About Michael Jackson
• Look inside the most active 5% users
• Look inside the Political Twittersphere

Summary

Over the past few months, Twitter has experienced explosive growth,
attracting celebrity users such as Oprah, and a growing mountain of
media and blog coverage. Sysomos Inc., one of the world’s leading
social media analytics companies, conducted an extensive study to
document Twitter’s growth and how people are using it. After analyzing
information disclosed on 11.5 million Twitters accounts, we discovered
that:

• 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity (see the report on analysis of top-5% users)
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto,
  San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over
  the first five months of 2009
• More than 50% of all
  updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than
  Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with
  19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more
  than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users
  who follow more than 2,000 people.

“We wanted
to take an extensive snapshot of Twitter that goes far beyond anything
done to document Twitter’s use, growth and demographics,” said Nick
Koudas, Sysomos’ co-founder and chief executive. “While Twitter’s
growth has been well documented, we wanted to put the spotlight on how
people use Twitter, as well as identify many of the key trends in their
backgrounds, demographics and activity. Our study, based on the most
comprehensive dataset of Twitter users, provides a wealth of
information for anyone interested in getting in-depth details about
Twitter.”

To discuss this report on Twitter, use the hashtag #sysomossurvey or copy us @sysomos. Visit the appendix for complete list of graphs. For more Twitter analysis studies by Sysomos, see the right-side navigation bar with a list of related articles.

Twitter’s Hockey Stick-Like Growth in 09

The Facts: 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.

So what accounted for the tremendous growth in
March and April? In March, Twitter started to attract significant media
attention after Compete.com reported that the number of Twitter users
had skyrocketed in February.

In April, Twitter’s profile
was enhanced when Ashton Krutcher (aka @aplusk) waged a public race
against CNN to be the first to have one million followers. Then, on
April 17, talk show celebrity Oprah Winfrey (aka @oprah) started using
Twitter, making her first Tweet on her show with help from Twitter
co-founder Ev Williams.

Although April did show impressive
growth, it was also the first time in nine months that Twitter had a
decline in month-over-month growth.

Twitter Self-Disclosed Age Demographics

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

Note: Only 0.7% of users disclosed their age, with younger users
showing a higher probability of doing so. Still, the statistics suggest
Twitter is growing in popularity among younger people.

Number of People Followed

The Facts: 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

The Facts:
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.

Followers vs. Following Activity

Fast Fact: Until people have 150 followers, they follow about the same number of people. After that, this starts to break down. Twitter users who are follow 950 people, for example, are only followed by 531.

The More Followers, the More You Tweet

Fast Fact:
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.

Tweets/Day

The Facts: 85.3% of Twitter users update less than once/day; while 1.13% Twitter users update more than average of 10 times a day.

Twitter Activity

The Facts:
As many people have speculated, 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% (see the report on analysis of top-5% users)

How Active Are Twitter Users?

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

Twitter Activity by Day of Week

The Facts:
Based on a sample of 20 million Tweets, Tuesday is the most popular day
for Twitter activity, accounting for 15.7% of total activity; followed
by Wednesday (15.6%) and Friday (14.5%)

Twitter Activity By Time of Day

The Facts: During the day, the most Twitter activity happens from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (EST)

Publishing Tools

The Facts:
More than half of Twitter users (55%) use something other than
Twitter.com. 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.

iPhone Users on Twitter

The Facts: Not surprisingly, the majority of iPhone owners using Twitter are located in the U.S.

Note: These numbers are based on the number of iPhone users who use
their devices to update their Twitter status. It also reflects higher
penetration rates of  the iPhone in the U.S.

Top Twitter Countries

The Facts: US is the biggest Twitter country by population, followed by UK, Canada and Australia.

Fastest Growing Cities

The Facts:
The cities with the biggest Twitter populations are New York, Los
Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston. Los Angeles is the fastest
growing city in the list.

Most Common Keywords in Twitter Profiles

The word cloud below shows a list of common words in bio of Twitter users.

Twitter Communities

We analyzed our entire Twitter collection of 11.5 million users to
identify communities. While the notion of a community is admittedly
open to multiple interpretations, in our case we adopted the following
intuitive definition: we seek to identify sets of Twitter users that
are tightly “connected” in terms of following each other. Our results
are astonishing:

• There are communities on Twitter for nearly any topic! Sample
  communities include users interested exclusively on children’s books,
  lounge music, new parents, lawyers, state politics, city events, etc.
• The denser the community, the more specific the topics of interest. One
  for example, can easily observe a tightly coupled community of mothers
  interested exclusively on children’s books, as well as a loosely
  coupled communities of individuals interested in politics in the U.S.
• Communities tend to be of manageable size (in accordance with known theories in sociology)  

We will be updating our blog (blog.sysomos.com) with Twitter communities.

Methodology

Sysomos 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.
Genders are based on the analysis of user’s real names as disclosed
against extensive lists of male and female names. Statistics for social
media marketers is based on users who mention their profession in their
profiles as social media practitioners, online marketers, and pr
professionals.

Note: this survey report was produced in May and, as a result, hence data for May 2009 is not complete.

→ Appendix for reference and complete list of graphs

About Sysomos

Sysomos is redefining social media analytics by providing corporations,
marketers, public relations agencies and advertisers with the
intelligence and insight needed to make smarter business and strategic
decisions. The Sysomos platform provides instant and unlimited access
to all social media conversations to see what’s happening, why it’s
happening, and who’s driving the conversations.

Sysomos’ products include

MAP:
A feature-rich service that offers customers the ability to analyze and
understand social media conversations. MAP delivers insight and
intelligence about the major conversations, why they’re happening and
who’s driving them. You can make unlimited queries on any topic to get
real-time results, collaborate, and generate detailed reports for
clients.

Heartbeat:
A cost-effective, real-time monitoring and measurement tool that
provides constantly updated snapshots of social media conversations
delivered using a variety of user-friendly and intuitive graphics.
Heartbeat organizes conversations, manage workflow, facilitate
collaboration, and provide ways to engage with key influencers.

Feedback

To discuss this report on Twitter, use the hashtag #sysomossurvey or copy us @sysomos.

Sysomos has collected a comprehensive collection of data from
Twitter user profiles and updates. We will be publishing our analysis
of this ever-changing and growing data on a regular basis. To leave
comments (including the kind of information you would like to see in
future) about this report, visit our blog.