Twitter

Each month we've been looking at Twitter's growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. Last month we saw a decline in the number of new Twitterers in November continuing a trend that began in July.

In December, however, new Twitter user registrations leveled out. Number of tweets grew significantly, and the number of tweets from new users grew as well, possibly indicating that people aren't just signing up for Twitter and not using it.

These numbers were supplied by Matthew Daines, the lead developer of Twellow. He says, "Twitter surpassed 1 billion tweets for the month, a 30% increase over the 892 million tweets sent in November. They also surpassed the 100 million user registrations mark by adding 7.123 million new accounts, just barely reversing a negative trend in new user registrations over the last several months with a 0.1% increase over the 7.116 million registrations in November. The number of tweets per user registration jumped almost 21% over November to 11.5 tweets per registered user."

"For the year, Twitter registrations increased almost 545% over the the number registered on January 1, 2009, while tweets sent per month increased in December 1,514% over those sent in January," notes Daines. "Again, I have no idea how many of these accounts are suspended or inactive, so the actual number of registered accounts might be less than 100 million, but the numbers seem to show growth continuing for Twitter."

The numbers seem to suggest a good start to the year for Twitter. The company also recently made some new hires (including some former Googlers) and has some interesting things in the works, such as new features for businesses and the opening of its firehose, which will lead to a lot more innovation in Twitter apps. Things appear to be looking up for Twitter.

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It seems that a lot of government scientists are betting people will turn to Twitter when Mother Nature lets loose.  Earlier, we wrote about the USGS's Twitter Earthquake Detector, and it turns out that the National Weather Service has cooked up something similar for storms.

Here's an official description of how the Twitter Storm Reports program is supposed to work: "The public will submit critical weather reports including a short description of their location (e.g. 'corner of 10th and Taylor fort worth tx'), and optionally photographs using the Twitter web interface, any number of 3rd party Twitter interfaces, or via a form set up on the NWS web farm."

Then the NWS will sic some software upon the reports and decide whether or not the information should be passed on through existing products.

This approach could work quite well, since information will only come from people who are intentionally participating (in comparison, the earthquake system scans for keywords that can be used out of context).  Also, the NWS has made it quite clear that tweets should include geographic info (whereas the earthquake system has to find location info where it can).

Format your storm report tweets to look like #wxreport WW <your location> WW <your signifcant weather report> if you feel like participating.  Do so after taking cover, of course.

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The fact that reports of earthquakes (or at least messages reading "EARTHQUAKE!!!") are quick to surface on Twitter is a key reason many people first recognized the site as useful.  Now, the U.S. Geological Survey has decided to have a closer look, unveiling the Twitter Earthquake Detector.

An official page announced, "[T]he USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and key word filtering to gather geo-located accounts of shaking.  This approach provides rapid first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard's location."

Of course, a few things still need to be worked out.  Alexis Madrigal noted that Dairy Queen offers a brownie earthquake dessert, and if the fast food company ever decided to give some away, the Twitter Earthquake Detector could well interpret the promotion as the apocalypse.

Also, if a devastating quake did occur, the Twitter Earthquake Detector might not pick up on anything in the immediate vicinity, as cell towers would fall and victims would have more pressing things to worry about than getting their computers back online.

Still, this is an interesting use of Twitter, and the data that'll be gathered could prove useful.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Starts The Year With Some New Faces

> 2009 In Review - According To Twitter

> Stone Makes Several Billion Tweets Per Hour Prediction

This week Facebook will reportedly be rolling out the ability to send status updates to Twitter directly from the publisher box. There are apps that cater to the cross-posting of updates between the two social networks, but this would mark the first time Facebook itself actually encouraged it.

The move is an interesting one, considering that Facebook has spent much of its time making itself more Twitter-like. Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook has a good piece chronicling the company's "Twitterfication" over the past year, which includes events like opening the Status API, letting users subscribe to their friends and Pages and receive status updates via text message, releasing @replies-style tagging, and encouraging users to make status updates public. O'Neill says the only step left is to open a search API. Of course Facebook has also just released its own URL shortener.

Facebook employees are already testing the Facebook-to-Twitter functionality:

The feature will utilize the new Facebook URL Shortener, which could actually lead to more widespread awareness of it. Once Twitter is flooded with Facebook links, people may start gravitating to that to shorten their own URLs, although the service at FB.me is not live for everyone to use yet.

Either way, things are really starting to heat up in the URL-shortener space. Not only does Facebook now have its own, but so does Google. On top of that, Twitter-favorite Bit.ly has just launched Bit.ly Pro.

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If You don't think Twitter is useful for business now, new features may change your mind. Twitter announced that it has begun limited beta testing of a new feature aimed at businesses, called "Contributors." The feature allows businesses to have more control over who is posting for their company Twitter account, and to make that information visible to users.

Would you find such a feature useful? Comment here.

"The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations," explains Twitter's Anamitra Banerji.



Businesses have already been finding different ways to personalize accounts. For example, the WebProNews Twitter account (feel free to follow it) utilizes "@cotags" to sign Tweets. However, this practice requires adding characters to tweets, and sometimes every character counts. If you're trying to optimize your tweets for maximum retweeting (which can in turn drive traffic to your site), you want to leave as much space as possible for followers to add their own information.

Twitter's new "contributors" feature should solve this problem. Businesses who regularly utilize Twitter will be anticipating the roll out of this feature. There's no telling how long this limited beta testing will go on though.



The important thing for businesses to keep in mind is that Twitter is finally getting serious about becoming more useful to them. There are a great many ways that businesses can use Twitter and the company knows this of course. Now, however, they seem to be set to start really catering to businesses. The new "Contributors" feature is apparently only the first of an unspecified number of business features Twitter is currently working on.

"The simple features that Twitter has offered to all users has worked for business users as well," says Banerji. "As Twitter becomes more integral to businesses, they will need more business specific features from Twitter – both on the web and API. We have been working on some of these features and are ready to start a limited beta test of one that's further along in development."

The key words there are "working on some of these features." Twitter is looking to start monetizing its own business, and catering to other businesses is bound to be a step in that direction. Ads and commercial accounts are said to be coming to Twitter soon. The commercial accounts would come with premium features, such as analytics. In fact, Twitter COO Dick Costolo recently said that multiple authors would be a part them as well, and that is exactly what they're testing right now.

We don't know what other features Twitter may have up its sleeve, but it will be very interesting to see what they come up with and how businesses respond. Either way, businesses are going to want to keep a close eye on what Twitter does, because it could have huge implications for key areas of how their businesses communicate online down the road.

What features would you like to see Twitter offer businesses? What would make Twitter more useful to you? Tell us here.

Related Articles:

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Citibank has released the results of a survey about small business social media use. According to Citibank, few small business owners and managers are increasingly using social networking sites.

Over 500 small business executives across the United States were surveyed, and 76% of them haven't found sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or expanding their business during the last year. 86% said they hadn't used social networks to get business advice or information either.

"Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses," said Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi's Small Business Segment. "While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them."

According to the survey, small businesses are relying much more on search engines than they are social media, or even small business-focused sites and WSJ.com.

42% of small business owners and managers say they've made greater use of their company's website to generate business leads and sales in the last year. Among companies with 20-99 employees, 57% say they've made greater use of their sites. 28% are using email marketing and 25% are using online advertising for generating leads and sales.

People who have been complaining that Twitter's site needs an overhaul should pay attention.  Twitter's added someone to its design team, and Mark Trammell, who will start one week from today, hails most recently from Digg.

Some of you may not be jumping up and down right now; it's true that Digg, while functional, isn't exactly a thing of beauty.  So here's an important distinction Trammell made in the blog post announcing his move: "I'll be starting a new job with the design team at Twitter building a user research program" (emphasis ours).

It may be that you'll have the chance to say what you want to see, then.  Or at least, he might be able to get the site to remain functional more often.

Next, there's Trammell's impressive employment history to consider.  He's spent most of two years at Digg, and before that, worked at PayPal.  He held a position at the University of Florida for a considerable length of time, and also once handled public affairs for the U.S. Navy.  Not many folks have resumes like that.

We'll see what happens.  Hat tip goes to MG Siegler.

Pizza Hut, a brand that has been in social media-related news in the past when they sought a Twittering intern, has now launched a campaign combining social media marketing with philanthropy.

The popular pizza chain announced today that it has kicked off a campaign to donate 4 meals to World Hunger Relief for every Twitter user who re-tweets the link to the Pizza Hut World Hunger Foundation donation page.

"Global hunger has reached epic proportions this year - reaching more than 1 billion hungry people around the world," said Pizza Hut President Scott Bergren. "At Pizza Hut, our goal is to get the word out about what can be done to help feed the hungry. We're asking our customers to help us spread the word through a simple tweet, and in exchange we will provide meals for World Hunger Relief."

According to Pizza Hut, all you have to do to help is post a tweet on Twitter that includes a link to http://ow.ly/qWn8, and the hashtag #pizzahut, and they will donate four meals to the hungry. The donation period ends on October 31. Donations will be made for the first 25,000 tweets, which will mean 100,000 meals.

Pizza Hut says the funds raised will go directly to the areas of greatest need, feeding poor school children in the developing world and helping villages become self-sustainable. Employees of Pizza Hut and other Yum! Brands restaurants will be working at hunger relief agencies, food banks, soup kitchens, and launching fundraisers.

Social media is becoming increasingly important to retailers and brands. With the meteoritic rise of Twitter, finding the right approach to successfully engaging an audience is key.

Coverage of the Shop.org 2009 Annual Summit conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

In the session "Twitter and Social Media All-Stars" the panel of experts discussed the best ways to leverage Twitter.

Kevin Ranford
Director, Web Marketing
1-800-Flowers.com

Denise Zimmerman, President & CSO, NetPlus Marketing, offered some guiding principles for using Twitter. Plan with a purpose in mind by engaging and adding value to conversations. Monitor feedback and expect the unexpected. Every business needs to determine their own guidelines and determine what works best.

Tracy Benson, Sr. Director, Best Buy Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media, said social media is not organized. Best Buy looks at goals and then involves other parts of the company.

Kevin Ranford, Director, Web Marketing, 1-800-Flowers.com, said when getting started in planning for social media marketing to figure out what customers want.

Alison Jeske
Senior Director,
Product Management
Drugstore.com

Alison Jeske, Senior Director, Product Management, Drugstore.com, said they start small but must involve all channels of business. Manage your campaign and learn how you can expand it.

When defining a purpose, Ranford said they mainly listened to their customers and let them define it. The key is to listen and apply. 1-800-Flowers.com is now on Facebook and customers can order directly from there, which will help with the holiday season. He said by responding to customers via social media helped to tie their efforts together.

Benson said one of the lessons learned using social media is you "have to realize you can't control the conversation, you can only host it." This sometimes means taking a step back and not overdoing it. Be ready to respond to a crisis and know when to ask for help.

WebProNews Reporter/Anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.