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The buzz in the Twittersphere is all about Hubspot’s latest State of the Twittersphere, available here. It examines levels of activity of Twitter users by the following statistics:

79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL

75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile

68.68% have not specified a location

55.50% are not following anyone

54.88% have never tweeted

52.71% have no followers

With an astounding 55.50% never tweeting, many started to say that most people were not using twitter and the huge growth that Twitter experienced were just accounts being created, not users being created. The main argument here goes back to the idea of monetization – if most Twitter accounts are inactive (as determined by the lack of tweets and followers) then Twitter’s value is severely decreased.

However, I don’t see the above statistics (especially the lack of tweets) as a sign that Twitter users are inactive. All of us social media consultants always say that the first step to social media is listening. Its important to know what people are saying and how to use a social network, before just jumping right in. Secondly, after the initial Twitter objection, “I don’t want to read about what people are eating,” comes “I don’t have anything interesting to say.”  Of the few (real life) friends I have on Twitter about half don’t tweet. They subscribe to their favorite celebs, a couple news outlets and their own real life friends. To them its just another RSS feed.

The real value of Twitter isn’t the number of active users, its the number of active listeners.

Big news out of China this week is that the government has once again cut off access to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other social media sites in preparation for the 20th anniversary of  the Tiananmen Square protests. You can read here, here and here to learn more.

Which makes me wonder why this awesome campaign by Ogilvy (Frankfurt, Germany) for the International Society for Human Rights does not include the President of China, Hu Jintao? (Via)

Iran

Cuba

Venezuela

Twitter spam is the new Nigerian Prince. Ever since the whole Ashton Kutcher race to a million followers I’ve noticed that twitter spam has taken over. So thanks Ashton for teaching people that twitter is not a social media tool, but rather a constant race to gain more followers. 

BA (Before Ashton) you’d see a fake profile with a tweet or two pushing some sort of pay for followers or ‘I make millions from click fraud’ ads every day or two. Twitter was usually pretty quick getting rid them and it was not really intrusive so I didn’t mind. But now we have hash-tag spam, porn profiles and generally people who think Twitter is just about getting a lot of followers. 

I tired to engage one such spammer, @Toxic_Concepts to try and figure out why they were hash-tag spamming. And while I didn’t really get an answer, they did switch their tactics after my tweets, so I feel like I must have broken through. Now, while I’m pretty sure they are just responding to any tweet they see with random comments back at least they are starting to understand that twitter is about talking to people. 

Check out the conversations below. 

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Hubspot released their state of the Twitterverse report a few days ago and I’m actually really surprised by some of the results. Decifinitely check it out for the full report, but here are a few tidbits. 

• 35% of users have 10 or fewer followers (really? not even spam follows them?) 
• Traffic has grown 600% over the last 12 months (not surprised by huge growth but 600% is amanzing) 
• Wednesdays and Thursdays are the most popular days to tweet (Thursday is my biggest tweeting day -check your own tweetstats)
• The top 5 cities to tweet from are: London, San Francisco, NYC, Chicago and LA (not surprised by top 5, but thought SF would be above London)
• 62% of users have uploaded a photo to their profile (that seems really low to me, do you have a picture up?)

If you’re on Twitter follow me here!

I’m still on my Twitter kick…so my apologies to anyone who is not (yet) a fan of microblogging. There has been an increase lately with spammers and while I will follow back most who follow me, I will quickly unfriend someone if I suspect they’re spam (or really annoying). Do people who spam actually click on spam links, open ‘junk mail’ or get annoyed by it all? 

I think you might be a spammer (or really annoying) if:

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Twitterverse, Tweettown, Twittersphere…whatever you want to call the group of Twitter was all a flutter this weekend regarding the breakthrough of Twitter advertising. Be-A-Magpie is the first attempt (as far as I’m aware) of monetizing Twitter and actually pays you to give up a few of your tweets to advertisers. 

I really do not understand what the uproar is about. Seems like a solid amount of Twitters are involved in marketing, advertising, social media or at the very least promoting themselves. As long as advertisers respect the social space and put out interesting tweets, I don’t think it’ll change Twitter very much. 

Spammers who create an account, follow thousands of people without providing substaintial content just to get traffic on their website are far worse then any Magppie. 

Check out twitter search for those discussing Magpies and the acutal magpie tweets. Intersting stuff! 

Ok I think I’m finally addicted to Twitter. I signed up for Twollow earlier this week and that pushed me over the edge. Despite my love of microblogging, most of my friends and coworkers barely know the name Twitter.

I stumled upon this neat little slideshare on the Twittering which I think covers the basics rather well.

There is a lot of argument amongst advertisers, social media users and the online gurus as to where advertising stands in the lines of social media.

• Is it really ok to make your brand a “friend” or to ask people to become your “fan”?
• Do banner ads and text ads intrude on the social space on the web?
• What does engagement really mean?
• Do social media users respond to advertising while in the midst of a conversation with their friends Can social media really monetize itself and prove that their worth the billions of dollars marked on their price tags?

Honestly, I have no flippin clue to any of those answers.

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Twitter is a great tool that so few people have learned to take advantage of, but one local police department has learned to utilize micro blogging as a public service tool.  The Scottsdale, AZ PD tweets about traffic issues, breaking news like bomb scares, missing people updates and other crime news. I’m surprised that San Francisco police didn’t think of this first and I hope San Diego is next!

Check it out here.