Twitter users twice as receptive to advertising « IT News
Posted by Nathan Solomon | 29 September 2009, 4:07 am
Users of micro-blogging site more open to advertising than other social media site users, report shows.
People who use Twitter Inc. appear to be much more open to advertising than those who use other social media, a tendency that might pay off for investors in the micro-blogging service.
The finding, published in a report by Los Angeles-based research group Interpret LLC, provides a shot in the arm for the wildly popular micro-blogging service, which has so far been unable to make money.
The Interpret report, based on a survey of 9,200 Internet users, found Twitter users are twice as likely to review or rate products online (24% vs. 12%), visit company profiles (20% vs. 11%) and click on advertisements or sponsors (20% vs. 9%) as those who only belong to traditional social networking Web sites like Facebook Inc. and News Corp.-owned MySpace. News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of this newswire.
The report comes as San Francisco-based Twitter on Friday announced it had closed a “significant round of funding,” which The Wall Street Journal said a day earlier could top $100 million, valuing the fast-growing Internet-messaging company at about $1 billion and giving it more time to figure out its business model.
Interpret said the data suggest that Twitter users uniquely demonstrate higher engagement with brands.
“Twitter has gone from digerati fad to industry force,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, in the report.”Vendors ignoring Twitter users along with their reach and influence do so at their own peril.”
The micro-blogging service, which lets people broadcast short text messages to anyone who wants to read them, has grown from about 4 million unique visitors in August 2008 to almost 55 million unique visitors world-wide one year later, according to comScore Inc.
But Twitter, which has attracted interest from Internet titans like Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. and faces competition from social networks like Facebook, has thus far failed to explain how it might make money.
Twitter has said it might develop premium services for business, but the company hasn’t yet unveiled those products. Co-founder Biz Stone said in a company blog post earlier this year that Twitter is leaving “the door open for exploration” around advertising.
Investors in the new round include mutual-fund giant T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and private-equity firm Insight Venture Partners, as well as existing Twitter investors Spark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital. – TotalTele.com
Twitter users twice as receptive to advertising « IT News
