10 million active Twitter users!

Announced yesterday. The UK is official fourth in Twitter usage behind the US, Brazil and Japan.

But first when it comes to access through mobile at 80%.

Yet another reason why the UK should a creative and digital media hub to the world for international businesses!

Interesting Numbers

About Facebook

- 800 million: users
- 500 million: access every day
- 350 million: access via mobile
- 2000: the number of people who work at Facebook

About Average Friends on Facebook

- 5: your inner circle of trust
- 15: your sympathy group
- 50: people you can keep up to date with
- 150: the physiological limit of our brain's ability to interact with people

About LinkedIn

- 130 million: sign-ups out of a global universe of 600 million professionals
- 2: new sign-ups per second

About Google

- 5 billion: users by end of 2010
- 5 billion: searches a day
- 3 million channels: (the number of channels on YouTube in the next 5 years)
- 250 million: the number of websites Google searches
- 20,000: the number of people who work at Google

About Mobile

- 80%: the percentage of clients who don't have a mobile-adapted website
- 95%: the percentage of mobile apps that fail!
- 835 million: the number of people who currently use smart phones
- 5.6 billion: total mobile phone users and the potential for growth as
smart phones take over

About Yelp

- 20 million: the number of reviewers who drive the quality of their
data

About Twitter

- 800: the number of people who work at Twitter
- 8000: the record for the number of tweets per second (Beyonce
announcing she was pregnant in the MTV movie awards)
- 100 million: active users
- 600,000: new users every day
- 250 million: tweets a day
- 57%: the percentage of active users on mobile

About Zynga

- 3300: the number of people who work at Zynga
- 55 million: players per day
- 13: the number of different languages they play in
- $52 billion: the size of the gaming market

Twitter rejects London

The Times announced on Tuesday that Twitter has rejected approaches from London and chosen Dublin as its corporate HQ; attracted by the corporation tax rate of 12.5% and the hi-tech company it can keep: including WPP, Google, Aviva, Zynga.

The sooner we attract them back, the better, in my view.

Advertising on Twitter

How will twitterati respond to Twitter's latest initiative, announced at the Cannes Advertising Festival last week?

Promoted tweets in the main stream; promoted trends at the top of the list of the most popular topics of discussion; promoted accounts in a list of recommended users to follow? (FT 23rd June 2011). Will this financially-driven model (revenues from advertising) deliver, or will users feel exploited, and move on?

And if so, where to? Watch this space.

Does Twitter mood predict the stock market?

According to Johan Bollen, a professor of informatics at Indiana University, it does.

City AM's Craig Drake reports how Bollen's research paper, titled "Twitter mood predicts stock market" claims an 87 per cent accuracy rate at predicting the movements of the Dow.

That's why Derwent Capital Markets have bought the exclusive rights for the use of Bollen's analytics program via a licensing agreement with Indiana University. The hedge fund has also hired Professor Bollen, along with co-author of the study Huina Mao, as consultants.

Last week, they launched the world's first social-media-based hedge fund, claiming expectations of a yield 15 to 20 per cent returns.

Introducing 'queets'

A new word emerged during the Warc MAP (Monitoring Advertising Performance) conference last week, ably chaired by Nick Higham.

A question sent by Twitter is now called a QUEET!

Like it!

The inception of vuvuzelas

Following my post on Google's Zeitgeist report, I was interested to read the Netimperative piece on top tweets of 2010.

Even talking about 'top tweets' is itself a 'breaking phrase' or 'trending topic' as it would have been meaningless just a relatively short time ago. While the Gulf Oil spill dominates Twitter's charts, who would have thought that a word in common use such as 'inception' could take on an entirely new life becaue of the film. Great film though and loved the ending which, unsurprisingly, I didn't see coming!

Vuvuzela is, on the other hand, a word I'd never heard of until this summer's FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Couldn't even have guessed at the meaning of it, though the idea of it is permanently planted in my mind now. Probably could have guessed at England's underwhelming performance; a familiar nightmare squashing marketing dreams.