Micro-blog
juggernaut Twitter is on a campaign to convince potential partners and marketers of its massive scale, media influence and broadcast-like characteristics. CEO Dick Costolo held a business briefing
yesterday to roll through the numbers. The company boasts that it counts 100 million "active users," meaning registered Twitter members who have logged in during the last 30 days, The Next Web reported from the conference.
Among those 100 million, 55% are
accessing the service on a mobile device. It may be safe to say at this point that Twitter is a mobile service. The mobile usage has increased 40% since last quarter alone. Active users of
Twitter have grown 82% just since January, Costolo noted, and the pace is accelerating rapidly. They project that 26 million more active users will come on in the next quarter.
It is not just
about user-generation, but also lean-back content consumption, Twitter says. The site is receiving 400 million unique visitors a month, and "40% of our monthly active users do not tweet," Costolo
said, according to TNW. In a blog post yesterday, Twitter supported the CEO's talk with additional claims about the
brand's coverage of key communications categories.
According to its calculations, 84% of state governors post to their Twitter accounts, two-thirds of NBA players, all major league sports
teams and 99% of the top 200 non-profits. Twitter says that 87% of Billboard's top 100 musicians are tweeters, as are all top 50 TV programs.
But with such scale comes great unmet
possibilities. Twitter is still struggling to find the right ad model that leverages its broadcast-like qualities and always-tuned-in audience without ticking off followers. Costolo said that users
will start seeing more ads within their streams in the form of sponsored tweets, based on who the user and her followers follow, Wired reports.
A self-serve ad-buying tool will be coming online at some point for small and medium
businesses that can use geo-targeting.