[UPDATE:] Here is the updated Twitter nation data from January 2010
Sysomos has just released extensive research on Twitter use, filled with all sorts of fascinating information, such as 72% of Twitter users have joined since the beginning of this year, 53% of Twitterers are women, and marketers are 50 times more likely than normal people to follow over 2000 people.
I am always interested in comparing countries, so I pulled out and analyzed their statistics on where Twitter users are located to calculate the proportion of the population that are use Twitter. I used the Sysomos data on Twitter usage, the ever-handy Nationmaster for population figures, and a combination of the recent https://rossdawson.com/blog/at_current_grow_1 combined with Sysomos data on recent growth, as well as our own estimates.
The US is in the lead, not surprisingly, though by a far lower margin than even just six month ago. The global growth of Twitter has accelerated recently, making usage in a number of other countries not far behind that of the US. The English speaking countries – Canada, Australia, UK and New Zealand – follow close behind, with Norway the stand-out in non-English speaking countries, together with the Netherlands and Sweden. The figures suggest Twitter is a truly niche interest in other countries, including France and Germany.
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How Twitter impacts media and journalism: Five Fundamental Factors
By Ross DawsonOne of the most interesting issues regarding Twitter is its impact on the media and journalism. The Insight Exchange is running a lunch event Twitter’s Impact on Media & Journalism in Sydney on 23 June which promises to be extremely interesting, with insights from among others Mark Pesce, Renai Lemay, Paul Colgan and Corrie McLeod (click on the names to see pre-event interviews of the speakers by Beth Etling) as well as in-depth discussion by all participants.
Below are some of my thoughts on the topic. As an introduction, in the ABC TV segment below Mark Scott, Managing Director of ABC and myself are interviewed about the role of Twitter in media. Mark emphasizes that people want a trusted source for their news, whereas I point to the value of Twitter in breaking news. At the time I wrote more about these different viewpoints on Twitter and media, noting that Scott’s stance “just takes us back to the traditional view that news is only news once a journalist has reported it.”
I see Five Fundamental Factors on how Twitter impacts media and journalism:
1. Twitter’s role in breaking news
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Hanging out with Paul Krugman
By Ross DawsonI just got sent this nice picture of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and myself at the residence of His Highness Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research. We were invited to his home in the evening for an informal conversation after the MegaTrends conference we both keynoted at in Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago.
HH Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan is looking at a copy of my book Living Networks.
Top Twitterers: US, Canada, Norway, Australia, UK, New Zealand
By Ross Dawson[UPDATE:] Here is the updated Twitter nation data from January 2010
Sysomos has just released extensive research on Twitter use, filled with all sorts of fascinating information, such as 72% of Twitter users have joined since the beginning of this year, 53% of Twitterers are women, and marketers are 50 times more likely than normal people to follow over 2000 people.
I am always interested in comparing countries, so I pulled out and analyzed their statistics on where Twitter users are located to calculate the proportion of the population that are use Twitter. I used the Sysomos data on Twitter usage, the ever-handy Nationmaster for population figures, and a combination of the recent https://rossdawson.com/blog/at_current_grow_1 combined with Sysomos data on recent growth, as well as our own estimates.
The US is in the lead, not surprisingly, though by a far lower margin than even just six month ago. The global growth of Twitter has accelerated recently, making usage in a number of other countries not far behind that of the US. The English speaking countries – Canada, Australia, UK and New Zealand – follow close behind, with Norway the stand-out in non-English speaking countries, together with the Netherlands and Sweden. The figures suggest Twitter is a truly niche interest in other countries, including France and Germany.
Read more →
The Upsides of Downturns at Creative Sydney
By Ross DawsonThis evening I spoke at the Upsides of Downturns event at Creative Sydney. The Creative Sydney festival is intended to celebrate the creative wealth and diversity of the city, which is far deeper than most people appreciate and absolutely world-class. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get to any of the other events, but I heard some great things about what has been happening through the festival.
I’ll post separately on what I spoke about – below are the unedited notes I took during the presentations and discussion. There were some great ideas put forward, with the most prominent theme of the evening how more and cheaper space in and around city centers can support creative connection and communities. There are clear lessons for urban planning and driving creative cities.
Andrew Ramadge, News.com.au
Challenge of the death of newspapers. The upside is that young journalists are experimenting and trying new things.
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Innovation Bay angel dinner: great stories from start-ups Goanna, Posse and AdSoft
By Ross DawsonSince Victoria and Phoebe are still in hospital, last night I snuck out to Innovation Bay’s angel dinner. Innovation Bay has been running for five and half years, bringing together an invitation-only group to a variety of compact events. The founders Ian Gardiner, Rand Leeb-du-Toit and Phaedon Stough recently got together to reassess what they should do with the community and decided to run an ‘angel dinner’, inviting all of their speakers over the years plus some other successful entrepreneurs and investors to see some new start-ups. I in fact spoke at Innovation Bay’s second event in early 2004, giving an overview of the social networking space at the time, including key players and business models.
It was an excellent evening, and all three of the companies that presented were very impressive with very good stories to tell. Here are some brief notes from the evening:
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Phoebe Dawson born today!
By Ross DawsonHello to the world from Phoebe Dawson! One more perfect instance of the daily miracle of life…
She was born 7 June 2009 at 12:44pm, and weighed 3.85kg (10% more than Leda at birth), looks gorgeous, and is bright and healthy. Both Phoebe and Victoria are doing well.
Leda is very excited about baby sister! Daddy and Leda are back at home and baby sister and Mummy will come home soon.
Mythologists will note the connection between Leda and Phoebe.
We intend to all get away on a little holiday soon to have a bit of a relax if we can, then the rest of a busy year beckons…
US Internet ad revenue down 5% on last year – expect a shorter downturn than post dot-com
By Ross DawsonThe US Interactive Advertising Bureau has just released 2009 Q1 figures, showing US$5.5 billion for a 5% fall from first quarter of last year.
This has to be put in the context of overall advertising revenue. The Newspaper Association of America recently announced that first quarter newspaper ad revenues were down over 28% over last year, while Barclays Capital early estimated that total US advertising revenues would fall 13% this year.
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Internet advertising per capita highest in UK, Denmark, US, Australia, Sweden
By Ross DawsonTechcrunch has updated its analysis of the valuation of the major social networks globally, based on new usage and advertising spending figures.
As last year when I did the same analysis, the most interesting part of this for me is the relative advertising spending per internet user across countries, and the very strong differences in what are sometimes quite similar economies.
The relative ranking has changed little from last year, though the absolute figures have fallen significantly. Internet advertising spending has essentially been flat over the last year or so, while there has been a solid increase in the number of users.
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Video interviews with J.B. Holston of Newsgator and Stowe Boyd before Enterprise 2.0 Conference
By Ross DawsonThere is some great content on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference blog, including video interviews with J.B. Holston, CEO of Newsgator and Stowe Boyd. These give a flavor of some of the great content we can expect at Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston on June 22-25.
I’m due to have a call with J.B. Holston soon in which I will be very interested to hear his views on what I call the ‘RSS Enterprise’. He has some great insights in this video, including on the current pace of uptake of Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and the legal issues relating to privacy in different countries. A summary of some of the points he makes in the interview is available here.
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Back in one place and onto new things…
By Ross DawsonOver the last month – in between all the other things I do – I have delivered five keynotes in San Francisco, Perth, Sydney, and Abu Dhabi, which has meant an average of over 2 hours each day on airplanes. This morning this sequence of keynotes ended, and I now have a bit of a break from speaking commitments.
One of the things that will be taking a lot of my time and attention is the arrival of my second child in the next week or two. Moving from a family of three to one of four is a big thing – I expect! Soon after we’ll head off for a holiday in Fiji to get over all the excitement and have a rest.
Other than that in coming months there will be lots of business building, including working on the Future of Influence Summit and related content, creating some new web properties, and putting energy into developing a couple of the companies in our group. Hopefully I will be able to keep up a reasonable pace of blogging along the way, at very least by spinning off part of the content from our reports and research…