In the NY Times last week was an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk, who you know about if you are a wine lover or anywhere on Twitter. His $60 million family wine business offered free shipping in December and promoted the offer 3 ways: a direct marketing mailing cost $15,000 and brought in 200 new customers; a billboard ad cost $7,500 and won 300 new customers; and tweeting the promotion on Twitter attracted 1,800 new customers. Gary says, “Social networking is exploding. Facebook had 12 million users in December 2006. Now it has 175 million. You just have to be you. Get in the trenches and do it.”
According to Mashable (The Social Media Guide), Twitter’s growth just continues to explode. The latest numbers from Nielsen Online indicate that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Not only is that huge growth in one year, but in one month as well, as in January, Twitter.com clocked in with 4.5 million unique visitors in the US, meaning the service grew by more than 50 percent month-over-month.
Social Media Today details some interesting Twitter demographics that you might find surprising:
- median age of a twitter user is 31
- 35% of twitter users live in urban areas
- 10% of internet users in households earning more than $75,000 tweet
- 11% of online adults use twitter or a service like twitter to update their status online?
What powerful numbers. It’s a revolution, people! Catch the wave and ride it. Take Suzi’s class –she’s a generous master.