In a study conducted by Yahoo! Research and Cornell University, it was found that 20,000 elite Twitter users are responsible for over 50% of all Tweets. This group of 20,000 elites comprises a mere 0.05% of Twitter users. Which means there are more than 3,960,000 peons Tweeting away on Twitter. Odds are you fall into the latter category, right along with the rest of us peons, but the important message buried in this research is not who is doing the Tweeting but who is actually listening to those Tweets?
Almost from the moment of its inception, marketers have been using Twitter to get their promotional messages out to their followers. But is anyone out there really listening? Let's take a look at the research and see just what effect these Elite Tweets have on the peons below them.
The research conducted by Shaomei Wu of Cornell University and Jake M. Hofman, Winter A. Mason and Duncan J. Watts of Yahoo! Research is really quite impressive. Using Twitter lists they set out to answer 3 questions:
- Who is producing Tweets?
- Who is reading Tweets?
- How do Tweets flow through the system?
In answer to the first question, it was easy enough to analyze databases and see that approximately 50% of the Tweets that people read are generated by just 20,000 users whom they termed Elite users. This group of Elite users is made up of media members and, not surprisingly, celebrities. It's interesting to note that the researches found the media members Tweeted the most information and the celebrities were the most followed.
To analyze the flow of information, Twitter users were then broken down into 4 groups: media, celebrities, organizations and bloggers, and they found that media personalities typically follow other media personalities, celebrities follow other celebrities, and bloggers follow other bloggers. However, organizations typically follow bloggers.
The following list includes the exact names and websites used to conduct the study. Each of these is a member of the elite group of Twitter users:
Celebrities: Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton
Media: CNN, New York Times
Organizations: Amnesty International, World Wildlife Foundation, Yahoo! Inc., Whole Foods
Blogs: BoingBoing, FamousBloggers, problogger, mashable, Chrisbrogan, virtuosoblogger, Gizmodo, Ileane, dragonblogger, bbrian017, hishaman, copyblogger, engadget, danielscocco, BlazingMinds, bloggersblog, TycoonBlogger, shoemoney, wchingya, extremejohn, GrowMap, Kikolani, Smartbloggerz, Element 321, brandonacox, remarkablogger, jsinkeywest, seosmarty, NotAProBlog, kbloemendaal, JimiJones, and ditesco
This research list seems like a very small sampling of users and indeed, the people conducting the study admitted that their results may seem biased. To address this concern they also generated a sample group based on all users, on all Twitter lists, who generated at least one Tweet during the research period.
As for the question, “Who is listening to whom?” the researchers seemed to be a little surprised at their results. It seems that celebrities overwhelmingly listen to other celebrities, media personalities listen to other media personalities, bloggers listen to other bloggers, etc. And again, the lone dissenters were organizations, who seem to be listening to everyone.
But the most interesting revelation was how these Tweets trickle down to regular Twitter users, the peons, if you will.
While the 20,000 members of the Twitter Elite are responsible for generating over 50% of all Tweets, theirs are not necessarily the Tweets that are being consumed. The research indicates that almost half of the Tweets that are received and read are generated by a highly respected group of intermediaries made up of over 500,000 regular Twitter users, not Elites.
If you want to get even more specific, the researchers found that the Tweets with the most longevity contained multi-media content such as music and videos.
What does this mean to the average Internet marketer?
This study was in no way directed at Internet marketers who might be using Twitter as a marketing tool so it makes no suggestions and offers no advice on how to improve your marketing results. However, let's take a look at some of these results from a marketing standpoint:
20,000 Elite Tweeters generate over 50% of consumed Tweets
What are those 20,000 people Tweeting about? You certainly don't see them posting an endless stream of repetitive promotional links and mindless motivational messages. People follow these Elite because they are Tweeting regular, relevant messages. They don't load up some Twitter app and let it spew crap all day long. Wanna test my theory? Take a look at who you're following and what they're Tweeting. That should tell you something.
500,000 regular Twitter users are passing on the information
If you're using Twitter as a marketing tool, chances are you're probably following at least one of the Elite Tweeters but you're probably also following several of these authoritative, regular Tweeters, as is everyone else on Twitter. This second-tier Tweeter is sending you this information either in re-Tweets or by generating his own Tweet, but either way, he's passing it on and you're consuming it.
By 'consuming' the researchers mean that you are reading these Tweets, acting on them, and possibly passing them on to your own followers. Again, the underlying question is – which Tweets do you consume? Which do you re-Tweet?
Take a look at your Twitter stats to see which of your Tweets are being re-Tweeted. If the answer is none, then compare the content of your Tweets to the content of the Tweets you yourself consume. Which Tweets do you find most valuable and why? Which Tweets do you yourself ignore? You probably don't spend your spare time clicking on promotional links and reading motivational Tweets so why would you expect that your Followers would? Obviously, they're not. They're too busy reading the interesting Tweets they're receiving from the Twitter Elite.
From a marketing standpoint the results of this research are pretty conclusive. Over 4 million Twitter users are out there consuming over 22 million Tweets every day. And over 50% of those Tweets are coming from the Elite Tweeters. Why? Because the Elite Tweeters obviously have something to say that's worth listening to. Can you say the same about your Tweets?
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