While attending an Internet marketing conference in Chicago, I spent a lot of time networking with my peers.
As I sat at the dinner table last night, I noticed that a bunch of us were twittering on our handhelds.
Simon Leung, Donna Fox, Eric Farewell, Anik Singal and several others had their PDAs or phone out and were twittering away… sometimes to each other other, even though they were sitting across the table from each other!
So I thought to myself… \”Geeks!\”
And than I wondered….
With all the people \”following\” each other, how may followers were truly active.
It inspired me to do a series of only slightly scientific experiments to see if it were possible to extrapolate some data that would be of use to twitterers.
At 1 am on Saturday morning, this is what I tweeted…
\”Twitter experiment #1 – How many followers will see this message within 24 hours AND reply to me? Go! Results reported after 24 hours. \”
It\’s now been 24 hours and I can give you the results of my only barely scientific experiment.
First of all, you should know that at the time I began the experiment I had 2317 followers on Twitter.
At the end of the 24 hours I had 2340. I typically will get 15 or so new followers each day, so I probably added a few additional new ones as a result.
It\’s important to note the date and time at which I tweeted. SInce it was 1 am CST on Saturday morning, there were far fewer people online than there may have been had I posted at 1 pm CST on Wednesday afternoon.
As you would expect, there was an immediate flood of @joelcomm responses from those who were actively twittering at the moment, but I could easily speculate the numbers would be higher if I choose a more convenient time and date.
There was something else I didn\’t account for. I expected people to reply with @joelcomm as a public tweet.
However, some people choose to reply via private message. I certainly should count those.
And since I have my Twitter displaying on my Facebook page, some people choose to message me directly on Facebook. Those, too, should be counted.
So here are the stats…
104 – People who responded with a public @joelcomm (the majority within the first few hours and none in the last five hours)
6 – People who responded via Twitter private message
6 – People who responded via Facebook private message
That\’s a total of 116 people who responded to my public request for a ping back.
That\’s essentially a 5% conversion rate.
How do those numbers strike you? Would you have expected more responses? Fewer responses?
I will be doing some additional experiments in the coming weeks as I think we, as a Twitter community, could do with a better sense of what is actually taking place in the Twittersphere. Stay tuned for more experiments and results!
SIDEBAR: When I set this up, I realized shortly thereafter that I would not be able to tweet again for 24 hours. If I did, my primary request for responses would disappear from my profile.
What\’s the solution?
I think Twitter should add a function that would allow you to add TWO messages at once.
The primary message would be like a signature line that could stay on your profile page at all times.
The secondary message would be the more traditional \”what are you doing now\”
In this way, I believe people would use the service more because they could tweet freely and still keep a primary message in front of their followers. I know I would like to see it happen!
Anyone know someone at Twitter to suggest this to?
Anyhow, I would love it if you would do three simple things…
1) Twitter about this blog entry so others in your circle can check out the results
2) Leave your comments below
3) Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/joelcomm
Tweet on!