12
2009
Where to From Twitter
Is Twitter, as Eric Schmidt opined last week, the poor man’s email? Is it a Facebook or Google killer? What can clickstream data tell us about how people are using Twitter and how does that compare to email, Facebook and search engines?
The following table shows the top 20 websites visited after Twitter.com in February.
To get a more macro view of this, the following chart shows downstream visits by category. The dark blue bars are parent categories and the lighter blue bars and sub-categories. For example, Email Services is a sub-category of Computers and Internet.
Twitter sent nearly 1 in 5 downstream visits to Social Networks and 1 in 5 to Entertainment websites in February. The top Social Networks visited after Twitter were, not surprisingly, Facebook and MySpace, followed by the Twitter Search page and YouTube. The top Entertainment websites were Twitpic, YouTube and Flickr. NewTeeVee did a nice post last week on the increase in visits to video sharing sites from Twitter and Facebook, likening these services to personal broadcasting tools.
Twitter clickstream comparison
So how does Twitter’s clickstream profile compare with the likes of Google, Facebook and Email Services? The following chart compares downstream visits from Twitter to Google, Social Networks and Email Services.
It appears that Twitter is being used as a social network and means of distributing content. This is by no means the only way it is being used – just one standout trend. Twitter.com’s clickstream profile is much closer to a social network than to Search Engines or Email Services. Twitter’s clickstream differs markedly from search engines in that relatively little traffic goes to retail websites and Education (i.e. Wikipedia). It is also different from Email in that less traffic goes to Dating websites and again, to retail and Business and Finance websites.
Also, a higher share of downstream visits from Twitter.com go to entertainment websites, in particular photo sharing, and a much larger share go to Blogs and Personal Websites (7.28% in February) and to News and Media. Sounds more like blogging than email or search to me!
Other thoughts/comments/analysis/questions are welcome, as always.
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Nothing speaks to the C-Suite more than facts, figures and charts. This is a hard-hitting post.
Absolutely. It’s amazing how Twitter works as a vessel in conveying the message, which drives the people to other sites as mentioned. Even I, was directed here from Twitter. Guess a good network-building is very much required for info-sharing. I’m very glad, thanks for the enlightening.
Where Do People Go From Twitter?
It has long been felt that people go downstream to Twitter from sites such as Google and Facebook. However, a recent post from analytics firm Hitwise, shows that the reverse is also true.
Data collected by Hitwise during the month of February 2009 show…
Hope to see some info for online dating available soon. Its one of the biggest markets but the Hitwise info doesn’t say a lot about it. Now a billion dollar industry and researchers predict 1.9 billion by 2011.