Recently Sysomos published a study about Twitter engagement. Specifically they examined what percentage of tweets garnered a reaction. Reactions in Twitter can be classified into two types; a reply characterized by the @ symbol, and a re-tweet identified by RT at the beginning of the tweet. After examining 1.2 billion tweets they found that less than 30% of tweets garnered a reaction from the twitter user base. Broken down further 6% were from re-tweets and 23% were replies. Meaning 71% of tweets get no reaction at all.
So what does this tell us about Twitter? Should it still be seen as a community or simply a 140 character sounding board? If you look at celebrities on Twitter the argument against community is pretty clear. The majority of celebs on Twitter follow no one and rarely reply to their followers. Further evidence of the lack of engagement on Twitter is the level of conversations that do happen. Based on the data from Sysomos most conversations only go three levels deep (about 1.5% of the 23% that get replies). Meaning the original post gets a reply then the original poster replies to that reply. With only three levels you can imagine the conversations remain quite superficial. Don’t believe me? Take a cruise through the time line of @KanyeWest and you’ll see what I’m talking about. This doesn’t mean twitter has lost its lustre by any means. Usage is steadily rising and more and more tweets are being generated. What this means is Twitter is not the engagement vehicle it was once thought to be.
What Twitter has become is a source for quick information. Newspapers and broadcast news are all over this, often breaking stories on Twitter and driving users back to websites for more information. RSS used to be the source for almost real-time news but Twitter has effectively killed the RSS feed and many people log onto Twitter to get updates on what’s happening in the world around them.
The numbers are pretty clear; engagement on Twitter is fleeting. It has become a new form of broadcasting quickly in real time and not about conversation. Users are now using Twitter to inform their followers of new content, events, and happenings. Twitter is an important part of the digital marketing mix but if it’s interaction you’re after, you’re going to need to find another more effective venue.
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