Scrolling through my Twitter feed is something I do on an hourly (if not more) basis. Whether I'm sitting in class, riding in the car, or just sitting around, I am constantly checking to see if there is updated news and waiting to be informed on what is happening around the world. Twitter, as defined by the creator, was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds". This is what the world has come to. We no longer have to turn on the news or even find a computer. By the click of a button on our phones, we can read every important piece of information we need. So the argument strikes; is Twitter able to replace every old piece of informational news we used to depend on? Below are 20 interesting facts about Twitter from 2011 that give you an idea of how powerful this social media site is.
1. There are currently about 110 million users on Twitter (as of 2011).
2. Twitter only had 8 employees in 2009. In 2011, they have over 400.
3. 21% of Twitter accounts are blank with no posts―get to posting people!
4. 93.6% of Twitter profiles have less than 100 followers and 92.4% follow less than 100 profiles. It seems like a majority of tweets are marketers.
5. There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.
6. Of all Twitter accounts, 72.5% were created in the first half of 2009
7. Dominated by the few: 5% of all Twitter accounts create 75% of all tweets
8. Because of a Twitter donation, The Library of Congress has access to all tweets on Twitter for research and preservation.
9. New York has the most Twitter profiles. Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston vie for second.
10. On Twitter, there are more than 600 million searches done every single day
11. Women account for more than 53% of Twitter users
12. Most users do not follow that many people. Only 15% of users follow over 2,000 people
13. Everyday, Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users.
14. At first, Twitter’s goal was simple. It just wanted to be a very simple SMS-text service.
15. The U.S. Only accounts for about 40% of Twitter use.
16. Twitter is accessed by more than 30% users via their mobile phone.
17. Stephen Colbert sent the most re-tweeted Tweet in Twitter history thus far-- "in honor of oil soak birds, 'tweets' are now 'gurgles."
18. Lady Gaga was the first Twitter account to reach 10 million
19. There are over 10 proposals on Twitter
20. The death of Osama Bin Laden caused the most tweets to date
I don't think it is fair yet to say that Twitter has the capacity to replace all other sources of information. Though it is a very powerful and useful tool, like much of the media we discuss in class, it has its place and so does conventional journalism. Twitter is great for a brief recap and quickly finding out what is going on, yet it is no means for finding answers and learning whole stories. People may have heard about the death of Osama Bin Laden via Twitter, yet they were not able to access the full account of the event without the help of other news sources. I see Twitter continuing to succeed and to progress as a vital news source, yet I do not see it making other news sources obsolete quite yet.
ReplyDeleteWow, these statistics are ridiculous. I am an avid Twitter user and had no idea about this. It's crazy today how involved Twitter is in our world, and I think they totally can take over lots of other news feeds. It's so sweet and simple. All you have to do is post a sentence or so that is intriguing and follow it up with a link going to the site where the information is. So I don't know if it can ever totally take over, but all news one day might be able to have its feed through Twitter. For me, I should start looking at it more, I really don't do that enough. There is so much useful news portrayed every second on the feed, it's crazy. I tweet myself more than I read others tweets.
ReplyDelete