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Image by jesuscm via Flickr

Twitter is certainly raising the profile of social media, although marketers/brands don’t know what it is, it does get them asking questions – which is a win for social media generally.

However, I and lots of other pessimists doubt Twitter’s phenomenal growth and how it’s changed the world. For me it’s profile is partly due to it’s value to the publishing community – basically it helps journalists find stories quick, which makes their lives easier, so they write about it lots.

However, a Hubspot report, which surveyed 4.5 million Twitter accounts gives us a good indication of the uptake of the new craze.

Some of the key stats from the study are:

  • Currently 32.1M users, up from 1.6M 12 months ago
  • The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
  • The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738
  • 24.14% of users have a bio in their profile
  • 31.32% of users have a location in their profile
  • 20.21% of users have a homepage URL in their profile
  • 45.12% of users have tweeted at least once
  • 47.29% of users have at least one follower
  • 44.50% of users are following at least one account
  • You can read more here: http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/sotwitter09.pdf

twitterusergrowth

On the surface there’s been a growth in user-base from 1.6M (12 mths ago) to 32.1M (now) – a 2000% increase in 12 months – not bad. But as we all know not all the users are active, so lets consider the inactive accounts – inactive account could be defined many ways, I’m using ‘have not followed anyone’ as a broad measure. Hubspot tells us that 55.5% of people aren’t following anyone, which brings the active user-base down to 14.2M.

Assuming all of the original 1.6M users were ‘active’ the growth year on year is 787%. Now which ever way you want to skin that, or define ‘inactive’ that’s still impressive growth. Maybe it’s not as big as Facebook or MySpace, but how often do MySpace & Facebook get press based on their ‘active users’?

I still believe that Twitter is an over-hyped application, however, it is changing the game – and making marketers & businesses sit up and atleast ask questions.

Other discussions on the report