The History of Twitter's Creation
Today, many companies promote their business websites on the popular social network Twitter (it is also called a microblogging service). Many Internet users go to Twitter in order to find out different news and interesting facts. But how did Twitter appear, and how did it become so popular? The history of Twitter's creation will help us understand this.
The history of Twitter goes back to 2006. That's when Twitter's creator Jack Dorsey had the idea to develop an online service that allows friends to quickly exchange short messages. The first realization of the idea was in July 2006. The new web service was called twittr.com at the time since the domain name twitter.com was already taken.
Initially, Twitter was not widespread: its users were limited to the creators themselves, as well as their family members. Later, the service's user base began to expand, especially when, in January 2007, the first Twitter app for the iPhone was launched. And the real boom of Twitter’s popularity came in March 2007, i.e. almost a year after its launch.
In March 2007, during the South by Southwest festival, the number of "tweets" (messages) on Twitter tripled in just one day: from 20 thousand to 60 thousand. Next came MTV Music Awards and Apple WWDC 2007 that brought the worldwide popularity of Twitter. These events launched Twitter's victorious march across the globe.
By 2008, Twitter had 1.3 million users, and by 2009, it had 6 million users. In 2010 growth rate of Twitter social network's popularity was incredible: 105 million users as of April.
By the last quarter of 2011, Twitter had already gained over two hundred million registered users, and by May 2012, that number had already reached 580 million. At the moment, about 25% of the Internet users from the U.S. are registered on Twitter, almost 5% of users are from the UK, about 3.5% - from Russia, about 6% - from Japan.
What explains Twitter's popularity among Internet users? First of all, users liked the idea of publishing short messages of only 140 characters long. This allowed to quickly and comfortably use the service from any device, including mobile ones. Special Twitter clients for cell phones and PDAs appeared, making tweeting even more accessible.
The fact that the service was used by celebrities also played a significant role in Twitter's history of success. The world-famous singers and movie stars, famous political and public figures became twitterers and regularly published various notes in their accounts. For example, even the American ex-President Barack Obama is an active Twitter user.
By the way, Twitter will be 15 years old this year.
Why We Love Twitter: the Opinion of Psychologists
What is interesting is that the cause of Twitter “addiction” can be illustrated by an experiment on rats conducted by Dr. Marion Underwood, a clinical psychologist at the University of Texas.
The essence is the so-called "positive reinforcement" mechanism, which rewards the creature for certain actions.
Twitter offers its users unpredictable rewards in the form of likes, retweets, comments. These are what encourage you to keep checking your newsfeed. And that is enough to encourage users to come back to the social network regularly, even if there is nothing new waiting for them there.
What motivates us to subscribe to someone on Twitter? Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Michigan Institute of Technology studied the factors that influence the number of followers by analyzing more than 500 Twitter users and about half a million tweets over a 15-month period.
The researchers focused on an analysis of factors influencing follower growth that drew on advances in social science, linguistics, the computer model of communication, and network theory. In other words, no single cause of follower growth would escape the inquisitive American scientists.
The factors identified came down to three categories: social behavior, message content, and social network structure.
In a study conducted by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, scientists identified several reasons for liking and highlighting certain profiles over others. More than 600 Twitter users were surveyed and answered two questions:
Explain the reasons why you like tweets;
Explain your reasons for tagging your most recently liked tweets.
Why People Use Twitter
According to data published by Statista, here are the top reasons people use Twitter.
To get news - 48%;
To entertain - 48%;
To chat with friends and family - 34%;
To follow brands - 33%;
To strengthen professional network - 14%;
Other purposes - 12%.
Top Hashtags on Twitter
#COVID19 was the most popular hashtag on Twitter in 2020.
Hashtags were first actively used on Twitter. They are designed to quickly search for publications of interest. Accordingly, they are extremely popular on this social network. In 2020, the most frequently used hashtags were:
#COVID19;
#BlackLivesMatter;
#StayHome.
Twitter often uses hashtags to spam. Or users also tag popular hashtags in tweets that are not related to that topic. There's even a name for this: hashtag cramming.
Privacy on Twitter
60% of Twitter users trust Twitter for data protection and privacy.
In 2021, the problem of personal privacy on social networks is especially acute. According to eMarketer, users most often criticize Facebook and Tik Tok for poor security on social networks. In a ranking of the most popular social networks, Twitter ranks 7th when it comes to online security.
60% of surveyed users from the U.S. say they trust Twitter for data protection and privacy.
Bots on Twitter
20 million Twitter accounts are bots.
At least 20 million Twitter accounts are bots. They can help users, as well as harm the social network as a whole.
Recognizing fake accounts on Twitter in most cases is not a difficult task:
Bots have 2001 subscriptions. Twitter limits the number of subscriptions. The threshold of 2001 subscriptions can only be surpassed by getting the same number of followers. For bots, this is an unrealistic task.
Tweets from bots are impracticable or repetitive. Also, they may urge you to click on a link that leads you to a third-party website.
Photos on their avatars are stock images (you can check it with a Google photo search). Also, they usually have a blank bio.
Bots often have a huge number of tweets.
Twitter Market Value
Twitter's market value is about $46 B.
As of 2021, Twitter's market value is estimated at $46 billion. By comparison, the company was valued at $14 billion in 2013, and even earlier, in 2007, at just $220,000.
Twitter Revenue
Twitter revenue is about $4 B a year.
In the second quarter of 2021, Twitter earned more than one billion dollars from advertising, an increase of more than 80% over the previous year. The company's total revenue (including other than advertising) for 2020 was nearly $4 billion, according to Statista and Twitter.
We can also estimate Twitter revenue growth from 2017 to 2020:
2017 - $2,4 B;
2018 - $3,02 B;
2019 - $3,4 B;
2020 - $3,72;
2021 (Q1+Q2) - $2.23 B.
Twitter Compared to Other Social Networks
Twitter ranks 16th in popularity among other popular social networks.
If we evaluate Twitter compared to other social networks, in 2021, it ranks 16th in terms of number of users. There are about 4.2 billion active social media users worldwide. Among those people, 8.85% of people use Twitter.
Twitter Users Statistics
Number of Active Twitter Users
There are more than 396 million monthly active users in 2021.
This is probably the very first question a person intending to promote their brand on Twitter has to ask: How many people are using this social network?
According to data published in the Digital 2021 report, Twitter boasts 396 million monthly active users. More than 40% of them, 192 million to be exact, use the service daily (data provided by Oberlo).
The platform has been criticized in recent years, especially after several cases of harassment and its alleged role in U.S. politics. But Twitter has responded to the critics by deleting about 70 million fake accounts last year.
So far, it's pretty hard to predict whether this upward trend can continue. Although the number of Twitter users cannot compare with Facebook (the social network is used by 1.5 billion people every day), there is no doubt that Twitter's reach for any marketing campaign remains enormous.
In addition, we need to consider the fact that about 500 million people read Twitter every month without logging into an account. That exceeds the number of active users per month by 1.5 times. Such data is a good indicator of Twitter's real reach.
Twitter User Growth
In 2010, Twitter had only 54 million users.
Below, we have presented the MAU growth of the social network Twitter from 2017 to 2021, according to the data provided by Statista.
2017 - 330 000 000;
2018 - 321 000 000;
2019 - 330 000 000;
2020 - 353 000 000;
2021 - 396 500 000.
Twitter Users Statistics by Gender
68.5% of Twitter's audience is male.
In terms of gender demographics, according to Twitter, most of the users of this social network are men. Women use Twitter much less frequently.
31.5% of the audience is female;
68.5% of the audience is male.
Twitter Users Statistics by Age
38,3% of Twitter users are men aged 25-49.
Instagram and Snapchat have won the youngest users, but Twitter has its own audience to appeal to. Obviously, Twitter's audience is noticeably older. According to the Digital 2021 report, the largest share of Twitter followers, 38.3 percent, are men aged 25-49.
Time spent on Twitter
The average user spends 6 minutes a day on Twitter.
The average time spent on Twitter is 6 minutes a day (eMarketer). This is data that shouldn't surprise you, given the short lifespan of a tweet (15 to 20 minutes). One session on Twitter lasts about 3 minutes.
Twitter's popularity as a news source is growing, and it is one of the main reasons people use this social network. It's a popular medium for posting breaking news. In fact, journalists make up almost a quarter of all verified Twitter accounts.
Small news stories in the form of tweets provide easy and quick consumption. This explains the relatively short session time on Twitter compared to social media giant Facebook. The average session time on the most popular social network in the world is 4.96 minutes.
Twitter Reach Rankings
69.3 M of Twitter users are from the USA.
In this section, we will give you the top 5 countries with the highest Twitter audiences according to the Digital 2021 report, which were based on data provided by Twitter itself.
Country/ReachIncrease/Decrease
USA - 69,3 M +0,9%
Japan - 50,9 M -1,9%
India - 17,5 M -7,4%
UK - 16,4 M -1,2%
Brazil - 16,2 M -2,7%
And, of course, we are ready to share the top 5 countries with the least Twitter audiences in comparison to the population of these countries.
Vietnam – 1,6%;
India – 1,6%;
Morocco – 1,7%;
Russia – 1,9%;
Nigeria – 2,4%.
Top 10 Most Popular Accounts on Twitter
@barackobama is the most popular account on Twitter.
Let's also take a look at the top 10 most popular Twitter users and the number of their followers.
@barachobama – 123,7 M;
@justinbieber – 113,6 M;
@katyperry – 109,1 M;
@rihanna – 100,3 M;
@cristiano – 90,2 M;
@realdonaldtrump – 88,7 M;
@taylorswift13 – 88 M;
@ladygaga – 83,2 M;
@arianagrande – 80,7 M;
@theellenshow – 79,3 M.
Marketing on Twitter
Four out of ten Twitter users have made a purchase after stumbling across a product on Twitter.
Internet marketers definitely know how important it is to incorporate social media into a strategy today. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat are gold mines and huge potential opportunities for businesses. These channels allow business owners to expand their reach and increase brand awareness.
Marketing on Twitter is particularly challenging compared to other social media platforms because of the ambiguous nature of the platform. To best optimize a Twitter strategy, here are some statistics.
First of all, Twitter’s advertising audience is growing. Quarter-on-quarter change in Twitter advertising audience is +0.1% which is about +387 thousand users.
Note the following Twitter-related data as well:
Half a billion tweets appear in the feed every day (Mention);
That's about 5,787 tweets per second;
The average Twitter user follows at least five brands.
Marketing on Twitter can't be easy, given the stiff competition. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to promote a brand here. Just take a closer look at the following data.
Four out of ten Twitter users made a purchase after stumbling across a product on this social network. (Digital Marketing Institute). This is further proof of how social media affects buying habits of users.
According to statistics provided by Twitter, the intention of users to make a purchase increased by more than 5 times after they saw the product in an influencer's news feed. Engaging influencers is therefore an important part of a marketing campaign. Anyway, it works for most of the popular social networks. To confirm everything mentioned above, we would like to highlight that 67% of marketers used Twitter in their marketing campaigns, according to Statista.
Conclusion
Twitter statistics clearly demonstrate that this platform should definitely be part of a social media marketing strategy. With 396,5 million users on this social network, there is bound to be an audience that your brand can interact with.
