To celebrate the 10th year of one of the biggest social media platforms in the world, we have put together an amazing list of Twitter statistics. Since the little bluebird’s launch in 2006, it has racked up some impressive facts and figures.
Twitter is an excellent place for your business to build relationships, find and connect with industry influencers, and increase your brand awareness. If you’re not promoting yourself on Twitter, you’re losing out on potential leads and new customers, which means you’re leaving revenue on the table. Check out these Twitter statistics that show just how relevant the company is and how effective it can be for businesses.
Twitter’s Financial Statistics
Created in March 2006 and launched in July of the same year, Twitter has grown and changed significantly since the first Tweet was sent out on March 21, 2006. We may have all initially laughed at the idea, but it’s obvious now that we underestimated the power of a tweet.
- In the first quarter of 2016, Twitter earned $595 million in revenue.
- Twitter employs 3900 people.
- Twitter turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2015 with a net income of $7 million.
- As of August 5, 2016, Twitter’s stock price was $18.26 per share.
Marketing on Twitter
Regardless of the size of your marketing budget, spending that money wisely is crucial to the success of your business. Check out these statistics about advertising on Twitter, and you’ll see that it can be an effective and profitable platform to use some of your advertising dollars on.
- $531 million: The amount of revenue during the first quarter of 2016 generated solely from advertising, which is a 37 percent increase year-over-year.
- 88 percent: The amount of revenue during the first quarter of 2016 strictly from mobile advertising.
- $535 million: Advertising revenue reporting from Twitter’s second quarter of 2016.
- 89 percent: The amount of revenue during the second quarter of 2016 strictly from mobile advertising.
- 208 percent: The amount that total ad engagement has grown year-over-year, thanks to the introduction of auto-play video, increases in ad load, and improved click through rates in certain ad formats.
- 56 percent: In the first quarter of 2016, the average cost per ad engagement went down by this amount year-over-year.
- Over 65 percent: The number of businesses with over 100 employees who market on Twitter.
The Power of Pictures
Tweets that use an image have much better statistics than those without images, with:
- 18 percent more click throughs
- 89 percent more likes
- 150 percent more retweets
Spending on video has largely replaced other Promoted Tweet spend as marketers find video ads perform higher than traditional Promoted Tweets.
Twitter and Your Consumers
As ad engagement grows, it’s interesting to take a look at how consumers interact with brands on Twitter. Using Twitter to build brand awareness and interact with your consumers can improve your relations with them, and make them more likely to take action.
- 77 percent of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand or company when the company replies to their tweet.
- 92 percent of businesses on Twitter tweet more than once per day.
- On average, Twitter users follow five businesses.
- Users are more likely to take action after seeing a brand mentioned in a tweet. This includes visiting a website, searching for the brand, or retweeting content.
- In the past two years, there has been a 5 times increase in the customer service conversations on Twitter.
- A majority of consumers expect companies to reply within the hour on Twitter. The average response time is just under 90 minutes.
- Companies who use Twitter saw a 19 percent increase in customer satisfaction.
Twitter’s User Statistics
Before you market on Twitter, you probably want to know if your target audience is on the platform. Fortunately, the huge number of monthly users prove that there is a very large audience on Twitter for businesses to market towards.
- In the first quarter of 2016, the average monthly active users were 310 million, compared to 305 million in the previous quarter.
- Of those 310 million users, 83 percent of them were mobile users.
- In the second quarter of 2016, monthly active users were up to 313 million with 82 percent being mobile users.
- The United States is home to 66 million Twitter users.
- Of those 66 million, 21 percent are monthly active users.
- There are currently 3 billion Twitter accounts.
- 550 million people have sent a Tweet.
- In the United States, 29.2 percent of social media users are on Twitter.
- 38 percent of Millennials in the United States are on Twitter.
- Each month, about 500 million people visit Twitter without logging in.
- There are 6 million Smartphone Twitter users in the United States.
- The average Twitter user has 208 followers.
- 34 percent of active Twitter users login multiple times per day.
Globally Impressive
Specific numbers coming strictly from outside the United States are also impressive, with:
- 83 percent of the world’s leaders on Twitter, which totals 139 leaders.
- 247 million of the current monthly active users are located outside of the United States.
- 79 percent of Twitter accounts are held by people and businesses not in the United States.
- Even though Twitter is blocked in China, they have an estimated 10 million active Twitter users.
Twitter’s Usage Statistics
Now that you understand just how large the number of people are who use Twitter, let’s take a look at how they are utilizing it. Here are Twitter’s usage statistics so far for 2016:
- 500 million tweets are sent out every day. That’s 6000 per second, 350,000 per minute, and about 200 billion tweets per year.
- One day’s worth of tweets would fill a 10 million page book, or 8163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
- When Twitter first launched, it took over three years to reach the billionth tweet. Now, in 2016, it takes less than two days for a billion tweets to be sent.
- The volume of tweets grows about 30 percent every year.
- Twitter’s top markets include the United States, Japan, and Indonesia.
- The top five markets account for 50 percent of Twitter’s active users.
- Twitter is currently blocked in Turkey, Iran, China, and North Korea.
Highs of Twitter Statistics
Check out who and what is on top in Twitter statistics so far in 2016.
- As of June 2016, Katy Perry was the most-followed celebrity on Twitter with 55 million followers.
- The “tears of joy” emoji is the most tweeted, reaching 14.5 billion appearances on Twitter in March of 2016.
- Ebay is the most active brand on Twitter, followed by MTV, Amazon, Starbucks, and McDonalds.
- In one week, Pokemon Go was mentioned on Twitter 4.7 million times.
- Game seven of the NBA Finals was the most tweeted final game in history with over 8.4 million tweets.
- The 2016 Grammy Awards was the most popular TV event so far in 2016 with 7.64 million tweets.
- Justin Bieber is the most-mentioned person on Twitter.
- Sao Paulo is the most Geo-tagged city on Twitter with 638 million tags as of March 2016.
- #FF, or Follow Friday, is the most popular Twitter tradition with 539 million mentions.
- President Barack Obama is the most-followed world leader on Twitter.
- Caitlin Jenner’s Twitter account was the fastest ever to reach 1 million followers. It happened in only four hours and three minutes.
- Keith Lemon is the top fictional character followed on Twitter with 6 million followers.
- Real Madrid is the most-followed sports team with 2 million followers.
- The most-followed athlete is Cristiano Ronaldo with 45 million
- The event with the most tweets per minute still belongs to the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final. When Germany beat Argentina, there were 618,725 tweets per minute.
Looking Ahead …
It’s pretty clear that Twitter is home to some incredible statistics, and with the large number of users, there’s likely to be an audience for your products or services. As is common with any social media service, Twitter frequently makes changes to its platform to deliver a better user experience along with more opportunities for marketers to reach their target audience. They are doing just that this year with the introduction of #Stickers, changes to timeline feeds, and changes to how your 140 characters are used.
Twitter is also developing additional features for marketers like more detailed demographic targeting and reach, and frequency planning and purchasing. These features should launch in the fall of 2016.
When utilized correctly, Twitter holds many opportunities for your company to boost customer relations, increase brand awareness, and gain new customers. Contact WPamplify today to put Twitter to work for your company.
