Twitter Image URL Shortner Not So Short

I got a glimpse of Twitter's new native URL shortener for images. In a recent tweet by @dannysullivan he referenced an image of the home page for Bing with a Panda on it. As you can see from the below screenshot the image URL is pic.twitter.com/HowIUza (Not sure if this is truly the best shortened domain name for images shared on Twitter.) The image URL shortening service has not been released to the general masses as it is still in beta. 

Pic.Twitter.com - Twitter Image URL Shortener

This seems to be bad news for twitpic (which some believe would be acquired by Twitter) and yfrog. But this just seems to be the next logical step in the Twitter evolution to harness the sharing/click data for their analytics dashboard (see Twitter Moves One Step Closer to Business Accounts).  

Study on Online Social Sharing

ShareThis recently releases a new study that looked at online social sharing behaviors. The study looked at ShareThis data which compromised of seven billion sharing signals from over 300 million users across the top 1000 publisher websites. The study found several interesting takeaways:

• Sharing produces an estimated 10% of Internet traffic
• Sharing produces an estimated 31% of referral traffic to sites
• Twitter accounts for 11% of all sharing referral traffic (Facebook 38% & Email 17%) for those that clicked through
• Twitter accounted for 8% (down from12%) in regards to raw sharing.

I also want to mention a recent study, 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors, that took a look at social metrics that affected search engine rankings. From this study they found that Facebook shares were considered more influential (.28) versus the shared URLs in Tweets (.17). 

Page Level Social Metrics

Twitter Stats 2011 - Pew Internet Study

 Pew Internet released their latest study on Twitter usage called Twitter Update 2011. The study provides some great insight into the demographics of Twitter users. One of the bigger takeaways was that 13% of online adults use Twitter. This was a 16.5% increase over the previous study done in 2010. The study also found that over half of respondents (54%) accessed Twitter from their phone. The biggest growth for any age segment was 25-34 years old. This group grew from 9% in 2010 to 19% in 2011.

Here is a breakdown of the demographics from the study based on the 13% of online adults that use Twitter:

Gender

• Men  / 14% 
• Female / 11%

Age

• 18-29 / 18%
• 30-49 / 14%
• 50-64 / 8%
• 65+ / 6%

Race/Ethnicity

• White, non-Hispanic / 9%
• Black, non-Hispanic / 25%
• Hispanic / 19%

Household Income

• Less than $30,000 / 12%
• $30,000 - $49,999 / 15%
• $50,000 - $74,999 / 12%
• $75,000+ / 15%

Education Level

• High School Grad / 8%
• Some College / 12%
• College+ / 16%

Geographic Location

• Urban / 15%
• Suburban / 14%
• Rural / 7%

How To Find Twitter RSS Feed

Twitter recently removed the RSS feed links on all of their account pages. The move is to push the use of their API instead of using RSS, which is more labor intensive to keep up. I for one was disappointed in this move because the RSS feed was much easier to code for versus the Twitter API. But Twitter did not officially kill the RSS feed for Twitter profiles. There is a little hack that will allow you to access any user's RSS feed.

1. You will need the RSS feed URL structure, http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/0000000.rss
2. Next you will need to locate the Twitter profile number. This number represents the actual position of when you signed up for Twitter. The lower the number the older the account. To find this number you will need to download the Twitter app on your tablet or phone. Once downloaded you will need to navigate to the individual's account profile. Right under their name and Twitter handle you will see a number (i.e. #17,269,569).
3. Replace the 0000000 with this user number (without commas and the # sign).

Twitter iPhone Integration with Next IOS Update

It has been speculated that the next iPhone update will have better Twitter integration. With the soon-to-launch Twitter's own photo sharing service, some are speculating that we will see a "Post to Twitter" for photos. It looks like Apple may add a shortcut menu item to the camera that will allow the user to easily share their photos on Twitter right from their own iPhone.

There is even more speculation that with the oAuth for Direct Messages roll out, that Apple maybe integrating the phone calendar, iTunes music, or even allow for in-app social connectivity. This could potentially allow the iPhone user to send direct message calendar reminders, song recommendations, or game invites to other Twitter followers.

Twitter Releases Follow Button

Twitter announced today the newest feature called, Follow Button. The Follow Button is a new way to instantly follow brands, celebrities, athletes, and other high profile individuals directly from any website via a single click. The Follow Button will allow you to see the latest company or individual profile and tweets once you click on the username.

The launch of this new feature has started with 50 sites, such as AOL.com, CBS.com, MTV.com, and several others. You can easily implement this feature directly on your website at http://twitter.com/followbutton. This site will provide you the JavaScript or IFRAME snippet that you will need to place within your website template. The widget provide several customization settings such as whether to show follower count, button color (blue or black), text color, link color, language, width, and alignment.

Good news is that the Follow Button is hosted on a high performance content distribution network (CDN). So if Twitter.com goes down the Follow Button will not be affected.

Twitter Follow Button

90% of Twitter Users Use Official Twitter Apps...Maybe

Twitter reports that 90% of users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis. Sysomos disputes this fact by analyzing over 25 million tweets posted on March 11, 2011. Their data reflects that official Twitter apps accounted for only 58% while non-official Twitter apps accounted for 42%. A breakdown of market share of non-official Twitter apps:

Twitter Clients

• 16.4% Ubersocial 
• 13.1% TweetDeck
• 9.2% Echofon
• 1.8% Twidroyd

Syndication

• 5.2% TwitterFeed
• 3.4% KetaiWeb
• 3.3% Tweet Caster
• 3% Twipple
• 2.4% Hoot Suite
• 2.3% Tumblr
• 2.2% dlvr.it
• 2.1% Snaptu
• 1.8% Plume
• 1.6% movatwi.jp

Other

• 27.4% Other

One of the comments left on the Sysomos blog mentioned that possibly Twitter was stating that users were using an official Twitter app at least once a month. Since Sysomos data is a one day snapshot it would be interesting to look at the data in monthly aggregate to see if indeed the 90% stat is true.

Chrysler Drops The F-Bomb on Twitter

Apparently someone at Chrysler's social media company posted a personal tweet that included the F-Bomb to the official Chrysler Twitter account @ChryslerAutos. It looks like the individual selected the wrong account to post the status update to.

I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive

Chrysler released a statement on their company blog apologizing for the incident. They also noted that the employee was terminated, which seems a bit harsh. I know when managing multiple Twitter accounts from a dashboard like TweetDeck, I have inadvertently published a post to the wrong account.

Charlie Sheen Joins Twitter and the Mayhem Follows

It was the next logical step in the "Crack is Whack" tour for Charlie Sheen to hop aboard Twitter. For those outside the US, Charlie Sheen has been publicly going through detox and hitting every news medium to get his story out. Only problem is he has been a bit crazy in his rants. Any ways I would suggest that you start to follow @charliesheen and grab some popcorn as he unravels on Twitter. I feel sorry for the guy, but there is a lesson here...Crack is diffidently whack!

Google's Twitter Directory

Google ventured into tweeting in 2009 from the @google account. They soon grew to over 129 Twitter accounts as of today. Google has now created a Google Twitter Directory to help you to navigate this huge list of Twitter accounts that they manage. The Google Twitter Directory allows you to narrow the list by category, language, and region. From this page you can also find a list of Google Blogs, their Facebook directory, and YouTube directory.