Advertisers Want More Twitter Users

From their latest SEC filing, it looks like 218 million people are using Twitter. That may seem a lot but it's still significantly behind Facebook (+1 billion users) and even other public social media companies like LinkedIn (240M users). You can see how this number still seems short to a lot of Advertisers who are constantly being pushed to advertise on social media, especially ones that are gaining popularity and upward growth. A perfect quote from the article explains it's popularity but also highlights it's usage: "It seems there are more people talking about Twitter than using it." Yikes. That's a problem.

Another startling statistic is how many of those who go online use these social media sites. The journal stated that some 22% of U.S. Internet users are on Twitter. By comparison, 72% check Facebook at least once a month. That's not all. Facebook had about $4B dollars in ad revenue come in for their site. In Twitter's IPO filing, they said they received about $317M, or 85% of all their revenue. I know comparing absolute numbers is not a true comparison given both the site's usage, user numbers, and size but it's interesting nonetheless given how much reliance Twitter has on ad revenue versus all the other sites. But what I think is the most shocking number is the user growth year over year. In the report, apparently Twitter has actually slowed down in user growth to 7%--down from 10%-11% earlier in the past 3 QTRs. That's not good news. Especially if Twitter has so much to grow given it's small market share of total online users.

But people are still optimistic with Twitter. This includes myself. What twitter offers that no one else does it the level of engagement that a common user can have with influential people, business members, politicians, and celebrities. I can directly message individuals and get a response rate that is better than e-mail. Plus, Twitter is easy to use both in terms of user experience and in terms of generating content via short-concise texts--long form content is prohibited. I'm optimistic that what Twitter can't provide in total numbers will make up for in content and engagement. They're at a level that's untouchable by any other social media platform--and that's what Twitter wants their advertisers to think. Remember, it's not quantity, but quality that counts.