HubSpot's State of the Twittersphere Report is fairly meaningless, but thanks though!
Last week inbound marketing software company HubSpot released its second report on the state of Twitter, analyzing more than 4.5 million Twitter accounts over a nine month period to measure Twitter growth and report statistics on tweets, the Twitter user base and user geography.
With a background in Market Research and few years of twitter under my slim, dark, and muscular belt, I couldn’t resist reading this report. (Twitter is all the rage you know.)
Survey says..the HubSpot report is mildly interesting, like watching carpet grow. The findings are predictable, and the analysis is… (never mind, I’m starting to sound snooty).
A few of the findings:
9.06% of all Twitter users are inactive. (Users were considered inactive if they had fewer than 10 followers, 10 friends, and 10 updates)
Characteristics of twitter accounts include:
79.79% haven’t provided a homepage URL, 75.86% haven’t entered a bio.
68.68% haven’t specified their location, & 55.50% aren’t following anyone.
52.71% have no followers, & 54.88% haven’t ever tweeted
These results aren’t surprising, are they? Twitter’s recent rise in popularity, fueled by an onslaught of media exposure that hasn’t been seen since the likes of (oh I don’t know, something) has resulted in many sign ups by the not-so-social-media-minded or tech-savvy among us. (Kudos to them however, for jumping in and trying something new.)
Many people start an account, then wait. Others start an account, follow Larry King, Oprah, Ashton, perhaps a few others, and THEN wait. Something is supposed to happen right?
My wife fit into that category. She’s not the least bit interested in “Social Media,” but she does like to be informed. Something she saw on television was the final straw. Enough was enough. Around 10pm on one lazy weekend night, she signed up, promptly following a few nationally know tweeps.
I watched in horror.
Ten minutes later the first expected comment came.
Her: “I don’t have anything ground-breaking to say.”
Me: “Every comment you make face to face isn’t ground breaking, just be yourself.”
Her: “I’m not just going to say anything! (You ridiculously unhelpful jerk! Something to that effect anyway.)
An hour later, the final (and again, expected) judgement came.
“This is stupid.”
I’d been a twitter user for over a year, I’d connected with fantastic people. I’d discovered community, fulfillment, and useful information by the truckloads, but to her…twitter was stupid.
And truthfully, it was. Like many people, my wife has a fairly transactional, process-oriented mindset. She doesn’t have a “homepage url” because she doesn’t have a homepage. She doesn’t have a homepage because she doesn’t blog. She’s got better things to do. She hasn’t entered a bio, or specified her location; she values her privacy. (And why twitter should she enter a bio, did you explain any benefit to her in doing so?)
My wife didn’t join Twitter to “explore” or “connect.” But she did sign up, and dangit she expected something fairly immediate in return.
She got nothing.
Jay Baer sums it up nicely in his recent post, Why Twitter needs its bottom spanked,
“Where’s the video for new users? Where’s the getting started guide? Where’s the profile-creation ease-of-use? Where’s a search engine that searches the biography data that users include when they set up the profile? Where’s the “here’s a list of 100 people in your town, who have tweeted about x, y, and z”? Where’s the LOVE for the user?”
But I digress.
Here’s my overall thought on the HubSpot report, and the reason I started writing this post:
From a market research perspective of delivering insightful and actionable infomation…the report is fairly meaningless.
A more interesting report would measure the change in these twitter accounts over time. For instance, during the first month how many times per day, week, what have you, does a new user tweet? How many people do they follow or how many followers do they acquire that first month? The second month? The third? What’s the rate and timing of usage acceralation? I think a report that analyzed characteristics of twitter accounts over time would be far more valuable than HubSpot’s snapshot.
Another fairly meaningless observation from the report, Twitter seems to be popular in major English-speaking cities.
Ground-breaking this is not. According to Wikipedia, the English language has the second highest number of native speakers. China is number one, and we know how they are about free speech. Also, twitter doesn’t natively support language translations. Despite being able to connect, we are all still separated.
More fairly meaninglessness (Yes, I know that’s not a word), the top 20 locations of twitter users include cities like London, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.
Pre-dict-a-ble. What would be interesting is a per capita break down. By percentage of population, which city is the most twittified? Would Phoenix make the top 20?
Still, thanks to HubSpot for providing some fodder, and stirring up the gumbo as it were. I may be uppity about market research, but I’m not an ingrate.
Image credit: Meh by Яick Harris
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