We Are Organized Chaos

April 9th, 2009

Who Is The Twitter User, And Should Microsoft Hate Them?

So, the other day, ComScore released some stats about Twitter. Most notable among their findings is that Twitter’s adoption is being driven by a more “mature early adopter”. That is 25 – 54 year olds. Not exactly the socially inept dorky teenagers some of us have come to associate as being the first to adopt these applications (and drive usage trends). Looks like these Twitter dorks are still just as dorky, just much much older. After checking out those stats, I got to thinking about who the Twitter user really is, and if we figure that out, can that data point towards some potentially larger interactive industry trends. So, I decided to dig into our own data (i.e. I opened Google Analytics) to get a little more insight.

Okay, “our data”. As you may or may not know, we built a site, “Free Twitter Designer” (FTD) as a pet project. FTD lets Twitter users create their own Twitter backgrounds with a free online Flash application. As a result, I think it’s safe to assume that virtually every visitor we’ve had on FTD since launch is a Twitter user. And, it’s this user base that I mined for the data noted below.

Now, please keep in mind that we launched FTD back on February 18th of this year, and we’ve had just under 50,000 (49,572 as right now) visits. Admittedly, it may not be a scientifically random sample, but this data can still point us towards some insights/trends. So? Who is the Twitter user? For your data consuming pleasure bulleted out below are some of our key takeaways from the FTD traffic to date.

1. Google Rules

That news in and of itself isn’t exactly shocking, but the margin by which Google is dominating is. When I looked at our traffic sources and compared all the search engines, I found that Google drove just over 93% of our search engine traffic. The next closest drove under 3% (take a moment to let that differential sink in). Yahoo, is third with just 2%… When you couple that stat, with search’s percentage of total interactive ad revenue (46%), we should all pray that Google continues to be a benevolent dictator…

2. 1024 x 768 Is Going The Way Of 800 x 600

With Twitter users, there is no dominant screen resolution. 1280 x 800 is leading the pack (at 27% of visits), but 1440 x 900, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, and 1680 x 1050 are all in double digits.

3. It Truly Is A Global Marketplace

Only 56% of our visitors come from the US. It’s important to note that there have been no efforts to localize this site. We made it for a domestic audience, and it has spread internationally on it’s own.

4. Is IE’s Run Over?

Firefox is clearly the dominant browser for our Twitter users. Nearly 59% of our visitors use the browser. IE is next, at 18% but Safari is chomping at its heels with 14%. You should note, that these IE vs. Firefox numbers are virtually the exact inverse of what Net Application’s data points to, but FTD’s numbers could be pointing toward the future, as the recently launched IE 8 continues to under whelm.

5. As if the IE news wasn’t bad enough for Microsoft, it seems as though the Mac’s Operating System could begin to make up some serious ground on Windows in the future. 67% to 29% are our Windows and Mac numbers (respectively). Obviously Microsoft is still dominant, but their advantage is significantly smaller than the roughly 90/10 split we typically see.

It’s also interesting to note that the 4th most utilized OS is the iPhone (which doesn’t even support Flash) at just over 1%.

So, that’s it. Hopefully you find that data interesting if not useful. As always, should you want to discuss you can drop a comment below, or find me at @jack2point0.