Twitter is an online social and news networking online platform, where people can communicate in short messages called tweets via a personal computer or mobile phone. The platform provides a network enabling users to connect to one another and share ideas, opinions, information, and news. Twitter’s services include live connections, live conversations, and live commentary. In addition, the company offers a set of tools, embeddable widgets, and public APIs for developers to contribute their content to its platform, syndicate and distribute Twitter content across their properties, and enhance their respective websites and applications with Twitter content. According to Twitter statistics and analysis, Twitter is mostly used by public figures like politicians, celebrities, and musicians.
A user types a tweet via mobile phone keypad or computer and sends it to Twitter’s server, which relays it to a list of other users – known as followers – who have signed up to receive the sender’s tweets by either text message to their mobile phones, or by instant message to their personal computers. Twitter has become internationally identifiable by its signature bird logo, or the Twitter Bird. The original logo, which was simply the word ‘Twitter’, was in use from its launch in March 2006 until September 2010.
In June 2018, the Twitter market’s capitalization was approximately US$ 30 Bn. In 2018, revenue was US$ 3,042 Mn for the year. The majority of its revenue was generated via advertising and accounted for US$ 2,617 Mn in the same year. Till the end of 2018, there were 100 new agreements and 50 + from international markets.
In 2019, twitter made the usage easier by allowing users to follow topics not just accounts. As of December 31, 2019, there were 1,700+ Topics that people could follow in six different languages, with adding news topics each week. These topics are automatically suggested or can be found through the Topics section in the side dashboard on mobile. Along with this, in 2019 Twitter launched the ability to share Lists on both iOS and Android and added account recommendations.
During the Pandemic worldwide, Twitter held virtual watch parties for ESPN’s with #TheLastDance, a docuseries that profiled Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ journey to their 1997-98 NBA Finals championship, with live post-episode shows on Twitter featuring “The Last Dance” director, Jason Hehir. These parties had an engagement of around 11 million Tweets and the live shows had over 8 million views.
Twitter even collaborated with Global Citizen to live-stream the #TogetherAtHome concert that supported the World Health Organization generating over 10 million views, over 2.2 million Tweets, and opportunities for brands to connect. It also acquired CrossInstall to build MAP or performance products and to increase the value MoPub offers to mobile app developers.
In Q2 2020, total US revenue was $365 million, a decrease of 20% whereas total international revenue was $319 million, which is a decrease of 18% YoY. And Japan holds its place as the second-largest market with a contribution of $108 which is 15% of total Q2 revenue.
Twitter Products Consist of:
- Promoted Tweets: These appear within a user’s timeline, search results, or profile pages just like an ordinary Tweet regardless of device. Twitter has added product features to Promoted Tweets based on advertiser objectives, which include Tweet engagements –retweets, replies and likes, website clicks or conversions, mobile application installs or engagements, obtaining new followers, or video views.
- Promoted Accounts: These appear in the same format and place as accounts suggested by the Who to Follow recommendation engine, or in some cases, in Tweets in a user’s timeline. Promoted Accounts offer a way for advertisers on the platform to grow a community of users who are interested in their business, products, or services.
- Promoted Trends: These appear at the top of the list of trending topics or timelines for an entire day in a particular country or on a global basis. When a user clicks on a Promoted Trends, search results for that trend are shown in a timeline and a Promoted Tweet created by advertisers is displayed to the user at the top of those search results.
In Q2 2020, Twitter launched a set of features to help people discover Lists of a curated group of Twitter accounts related to their interests.
By region, in Q2 2019, the US advertising revenue totaled $283 Mn, whereas the international ad revenue was $279 Mn.
By Product, the video ads format declined year-over-year but was the major part of the ad revenue of Q2 2020.
By Sales, large to mid-tier customers, represents a sizable majority of the advertising revenue. PlayStation leveraged an 89% increase in video game conversation on Twitter building interest and awareness for the PlayStation 5 console globally.
The Twitter platform also allows customers to advertise across the mobile ecosystem, both on Twitter’s owned and operated properties as well as off Twitter on third-party publishers’ websites, applications, and other offerings across the full user lifecycle. The company enables advertisers to extend their reach beyond Twitter through:
- MoPub: mobile-focused advertising exchange, which combines add network mediation, and a real-time bidding exchange into one comprehensive monetization platform, and ad serving.
- Twitter Audience Platform: an advertising offering that enables advertisers to extend their advertising campaigns with Twitter Promoted Products to audiences off Twitter while retaining access to Twitter’s measurement, targeting, and creative tools.
History:
Since its inception, Twitter has been primarily a free SMS application, with a social networking element. Twitter was built using Ruby on Rails, which is a specialized web application framework for the Ruby computer programming language. Its interface allows open adaptation and integration with other online services.
In March 2007, Mr. Jack Dorsey joined the management team, and the completed version of Twitter debuted at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. In April 2009, Twitter’s social networking roots were obvious, when actor Ashton Kutcher emerged as the victor in a race with CNN to become the first Twittered to collect more than a million followers. In April 2010, Twitter unveiled ‘Promoted Tweets’ as its intended primary revenue source. In September 2013, Twitter became a public company and announced its initial public offering (IPO) in November, and raised US$ 1.8 billion, giving it a market value of US$ 31 billion.
Twitter Statistics
Q2 2020, marks the highest quarterly year-over-year growth rate with 34%, with US mDAU by 24% and international mDAU by 37%, driven by product improvements that are improvements in their machine learning model for better relevancy in Home timelines and notifications, and marketing, seasonal strength and global conversation related to the COVID-19 pandemic with the addition of 20 million new mDAUs from the previous quarter.
- An average US mDAU was 36 Mn, as of Q2 2020
- The average International mDAU was 150 Mn, as of Q1 2020
Fun facts:
- Twitter’s Average monetizable daily active users (mDAU) are 192 million as of Q4 2020.
- Japan, is the second-largest market, that is it contributed 15% of the total revenue generated in Q2 2019
- Till the end of Q2 2020, Total ad engagements increased by 3%
- Based on the active users, Twitter is one of the top 15 social media platforms used globally.
- Cost Per ad engagement decreased by 25% in Q2 of 2020
- 326 million people can be reached with adverts on Twitter.
- In 2020, 35% of the ad audiences are female while 65% are male.
- In 2020, in a minute on the Internet, 194,444 individuals are tweeting.
- #barcamp: The first hashtag ever used on Twitter.
- 125M: Average number of hashtags Tweeted per day.
- #NFL: Most Tweeted about league hashtag of all time.
- #トレクル: Most Tweeted gaming hashtag of all time.
- #TheWalkingDead: Most Tweeted about TV hashtag of all time.
- #NowPlaying: (or #np) has been Tweeted more than 1 billion times.
- Twitter first made a profit in Q4 2017.
- On November 7, 2013, Twitter priced its IPO at US$ 26 per share, and as of Jan 2019, it was US$ 31.
- A total of 1.3 billion accounts have been created
- 80% of active users access the site via mobile.
- Barack Obama has the most followers at over 121.2m, followed by Justin Bieber.
- Taylor Swift and Liam Payne are the most influential women and men on Twitter
- 83% of the world’s leaders are on Twitter.
- There are 500 million Tweets sent each day, making it 8,414 Tweets every second.
- The most popular emoji on Twitter is the Face with Tears of Joy emoji
- During the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final, 618,725 tweets were sent in a single minute.
- 92% of companies Tweet more than once a day, 42% Tweet 1–5 times a day, and 19% Tweet 6–10 times a day
- Nearly 39% of monthly active users use the app on a daily basis as of Jan 2019.
- According to Crowd Analyzer’s State of Social Media 2018, Saudi Arabia has the largest number of users on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat in the region
- In 2018, with an increasing focus on improving the health of public conversations on Twitter, there were promising results delivered in the same year, with a 16% Year-over-Year decline in abuse reports from people.
