Book: Stats

I'm supposed to be writing about Conversational Marketing with Crowdsouring websites, but I'm just not feeling it today.  That's the tough thing about writing a non-fiction / how-to kinda book.  If this were fiction I would just continue meandering down my crazy mental rabbit hole (yes, I've seen the trailer for Alice in Wonderland and it looks pretty twisted!).

So, today, I'll just post some interesting stats that were just sent to me.  I'd tell you that I'll put these stats in my book, but odds are that by the time I finish my book all of these stats will be outdated.  To give you an example of this, check out this Social Media Tips document that Kodak released last year.  It's an interesting read, but notice many of their stats have long been eclipsed like where they say Facebook only has 250 million users.  I mean really, that was 100 million people ago.

Also, check out my friend Scott's new MktgIdeas.com blog about social media marketing.  He's the one who told me about the Kodak doc.  He's also got some great insight into how people are innovating in social media. 

Anyway, here are some interesting stats that Bithika in my office shared with me today...

Cool Stats (that will be very outdated by the time my book comes out)
“Max Connectors” (those with more than 500 social connections) are more likely to track a brand or company on social media to learn about new products/ features/ services and to understand the company culture and its policies. (Marketing Sherpa, Dec 2009)

Total minutes devoted to social properties and blogs in the U.S. surged 210% over the last year, and average time per person increased 143%. (Nielsen Online, 2010)

As per a recent report by Nielsen Online (2010),

1. Internet users worldwide spent an average of 5 and a half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December, an 82% increase from a year ago. New data also shows that the global audience for social networks has increased 50% in the last three years, from 211 million to 307 million. (Nielsen Online, 2010)
2. When it comes to time spent on social networks, Australia led the world with an average of nearly 7 hours (6:52), trumping the U.S.(6:09), the U.K. (6:08) and Italy (6:00). But the U.S. had by far the largest audiences for social sites and blogs, with 142 million, followed by Japan (46.5 million) and Brazil (31.3 million).
3. Worldwide, Facebook was the top social hub in December, with 207 million unique visitors. Time on the site has increased per month to nearly 6 hours worldwide and 6:24 in the U.S.
   

HubSpot (2010) recently released its findings based on 5 million twitter accounts and 6 million tweets. Some interesting stats are:

1. The average twitter user has an average of 300 followers. 82% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers. 
   
2. In January 2010, the average user had made 420 Twitter updates, compared with 120 in July 2009.
3. The number of users who have taken the time to write bios, specify their location and add a URL to their account has doubled since the last time they reported on Twitter. This again tells us that Twitter users are becoming more mature in their use of the service and they're making sure they're leveraging it properly.
4. The highest usage days for Twitter are Thursday and Friday. There's a sharp drop-off over the weekend and a slow ramp up that begins building again on Monday.
5. Most Twitter users are night owls, actively tweeting in the evening between 10 and 11pm while wrapping up work or watching TV at home.
6. The highest click thru rate on tweeted links occurs between 2 and 3pm. (Followed by the 8-9pm time slot and the 5-6pm time slot.)
7. Thursday, Saturday and Sunday experience the highest click thru levels, consistently beating the average.
8. Tweets that include links are far more likely to be retweeted than tweets without links.
9. The more links you tweet, the less likely people are to click those links.
10. The highest percentage of retweets occurs on Fridays at 4pm. (Monday afternoons also have high retweet rates.)

Less than 51% of Twitter users were from the US in December 2009, down from 62.1% in June 2009. However, US users accounted for nearly 57% of tweets. (Sysomos, Dec 2009)

Broken down by city, London had the most Twitter users, followed by Los Angeles, Sysomos found. But New Yorkers were the most active tweeters, accounting for some 2.4% of all posts. (Sysomos, Dec 2009)