RAAM – Whoa!

The traithlon group had a bike clinic a few weeks ago and we heard from an owner of a local bike shop. The owner is a participant in RAAM – The Race Across America. I actually took a moment to look up the Web site here.

http://www.raceacrossamerica.org

This stuff is amazing. What an accomplishment for everyone involved! This is truly an endurance feat of dizzying proportions.

Maybe one day

Twitter Statistics

Back in November 2008, I decided to do a bit of research on Twitter for personal interest. I posted it on my company’s internal blog and regretted not posting it out here for everyone else to view.

Please find my Twitter analysis below.

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Published November 23, 2008

Twitter users are estimated to number in the millions with the Twitter Directory, TwitDir.com listing 3,328,420 profiles. Many colleagues have joined twitter and it seems to be an “all the rage” social media application.

I’ve had a lot of skepticism about Twitter ever since one colleague likened it to Facebook status on Red Bull. I already update my status on Facebook and my Google instant message program. Between them I reach all of my friends and even those I rarely keep in touch with.

After joining Twitter I tried to make some sense of things because:

• I need to know what the tool’s capabilities are so I can speak knowledgeably about the tool with clients
• Prove or disprove my initial inclination to associate Twitter as a waste of time

My assessment is quantitative and I have plans for a qualitative component when I have time.

Quantitative Results

• Over the past month, Twitter only tends to reach 100,000 to 150,000 users
• 52% of users are from the United States
• Over the past three months Twitter has only reached 0.1% of the Internet population. (Google reaches approximately 28% of the Internet population)
• Seven pages: The number of unique pages viewed per user per day for this site over the past three months

50 Users were selected at random on Sunday morning between 10:30 AM and 11:30 AM. Measurements of their followers, following and updates status were taken and recorded.

The 50 users were selected by refreshing the “Everyone” page on Twitter and selecting the 5th and 15th users to review. I refreshed the Web page every 2.5 minutes for a total of 25 times.

Mean scores

Selected users were following an average of 133 users
Selected users were followed on average by 153 users
Mean status updates = 6153 updates

Median scores

Selected users were following 39 users
Selected users were followed by 70 users

Median status updates = 1348

Following:

Standard Deviation  = 181.4351585

Followed:
Standard Deviation = 170.6342897

Status Updates:
Standard Deviation = 11845.71392

for reading

Stats from November 2008

Source: Alexa.com, Twitter.com, Matthew Ingram

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Back to present day – I do plan on a new study soon to see how things have changed since Twitter’s popularity on TV shows etc.

Did you find this helpful or insightful?