" 14 Twitter Facts and Figures.. Both Surprising and Expected "

Some interesting Twitter facts and figures have come out of  reports and research over the past few weeks and it reveals some expected results and also some surprises.

Expected

1. USA Twitter share is ranked number one with 62%
2. Most of the largest cities that use Twitter are in the USA
3. English speaking countries dominate
4. The UK is ranked second as a Twitter nation
5. The majority of iPhone owners using Twitter are located in the U.S. 
6. 65% of all users are under 25
7. Tuesday is the most popular day for Twitter activity, accounting for 15.7% and you Tweet from 11am to 3pm (of course this was expected, who wants to tweet on Monday)

Surprising

1. Australia’s share is 4th on the list with  nearly 3% despite having a population of  only  just over 20 million
2. Brazil ranks 5th despite not being English speaking
3. Women outnumber men  
4. 5% of users account for 75% of all activity
5. More than half of twitter users use something other than Twitter to tweet, monitor and manage their tweeting (TweetDeck has the largest market share with 19.7%)
6. 1 out of every 350 visits to a Website comes from Twitter as a source
7. Barely 5% of Twitter users go to an online retail service from Twitter. Google UK sends 365 times more traffic to shopping websites than Twitter

Summary: So what can we determine from theses figures is  that tThe typical profile of a Twitter user is

• You will live in the US
• Be a Woman
• Hate shopping online… what !!!!
• Young (under 25)
• Own an iPhone
• Enjoy Social Networking 
• Don’t like music

Note: Don’t take this too seriously 

Some of the rest of the findings after analyzing 11.5 million Twitters accounts, Sysomos.com (you can read their full report here)  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
• 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 people who identify themselves as PR professionals, 65.5% have never posted an update
• Of the people who identify themselves as PR professionals, 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 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.”

On the other hand Hitwise’s Research Shows 

• 1 out of every 350 website visits in the UK comes from Twitter as a source
• It’s the 30th biggest source of traffic in the UK
• 55.9% of all website referrals go to a social network, entertainment website, or blog
• Twitpic receives 1 out of every 13 UK Twitter visitors, making it the biggest 3rd party site on Twitter
• Barely 5% of Twitter users go to an online retail service from Twitter. Google UK sends 365x more traffic to shopping websites than Twitter

Summary from Hitwise:

UK Twitter users love CNN, tech blogs, and Facebook. They’re not very interested in retail, music, education, sports, travel, or business and finance websites. While it’s probably different for Twitter as a whole, we’d be surprised if retail websites fared that much better with U.S. users.

So Internet marketers, how can you use these findings to help your clients use Twitter more effectively?