In this post I’ll use the Global Web Index data to trace some basic profiling of Twitter users in order to better understand its scope in a marketing campaign.

How big is Twitter? (Really)

First of all let’s take a look at the actual popularity of Twitter around the globe. The chart below shows actual Twitter versus Facebook users (at least monthly) for each country. This datum is a much more accurate reflection of usage than the simple user count. The fact is that most of the people who sign up, not only post rarely, many of them never come back.

So who does use Twitter?

Let’s start with a basic gender segmentation. I select frequency of using Twitter and split the result by gender.
First of all we see there’s a slight prevalence of males among frequent users but probably not as much as you’d expect from a technology yet to go mainstream.

Young educated males

The mean age for daily Twitter users is just above 30 showing an inverse correlation with frequency of use. Education on the contrary is directly correlated with Twitter usage (being 30 = College and 40 = University.) In English, Twitterers are far more educated than the average.

This is reflected strongly in the type of frequent users. The blue fields in the left chart represent management positions while yellow and orange are for team members and support level employees.

The striking fact here is that half of daily and weekly Twitter users hold a position of responsibility in their job while non users are more likely to be junior staff. This might be a clue in favour of the use of Twitter in B2B communication.

Twitterers are NOT mainstream consumers

Digging more into the job fields we find a big delusion because a very big slice of daily twitterers work in IT or in marketing. So once again, the medium is the message. People working in IT are likely to use IT based communication tool and marketers are probably talking to themselves more than they are talking to customers.

At this point we have a fairly good set of information to draw some conclusions.

Regular Twitter users are educated, tend to be in their 30s and holding a position of responsibility all of which means that Twitter is good for engaging decision makers and liasing with people in business to business space.

Marketing professionals may use Twitter to communicate with their colleagues, to be updated on the hot topics while the use of Twitter to engage mainstream, FMCG customers appears to be less useful.

To satisfy the needs of both our research driven and non-research savvy audience we are now expanding the forms of data delivery. Along with the more visual and more structured online tool, we are making our data accessible via IMS Clear Decisions.

IMS Clear Decisions is a new form of data delivery that allows the more research focused users to work with the data in a desktop tool. It gives users more flexibility in analysis, working around crosstabs.

If you would like to find out more please contact the team on globalwebindex@trendstream.net and take a look at this information in the meantime.

Wave 3 Launch dates

The July data will be released to clients in two stages; depending on the access points you are subscribing to:

• Online tool: 2^nd week in August
• IMS Clear Decisions: 3^rd week in August
• Any proprietary data delivery formats: 3^rd week in August

Updates to the online tool

After the launch of our new online tool we are now working on developing it even further using our users feedback as guidance. The objective of the “reskin” is to simplify the navigation and analysis even further whilst allowing for more visualisation and flexibility in the output.   The GWI reskin will go live in the next few weeks! Even though training sessions might not be required by many of you, we will still get in touch, just to check that you feel confident using it and you are getting the most out of it.

The reskin development will include:

• A more structured analysis process with clearly defined “topline analysis” for global stats and trends and a more detailed “audience analysis” for more personalised analysis
• Analysis of trend data
• The addition of index scores and universe estimates
• Integrated help features
• Step by step video guides

Expanding our survey data

New Questions

We have also added a number of new sections and categories in Wave 3 that will provide greater focus on social media and its global impact:

• The barriers to social media involvement
• How do social media ‘compete’ with TV news when it comes to breaking news or information?
• What drives people to pay for online content?
• What do consumers want from brands social media platforms by category?
• Plus …. new categories analysis: Healthcare + Alcoholic Drinks

New markets

Wave 3 will also include Poland and Malaysia. Wave 4 will now cover Singapore, Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa. Wave 5 is scheduled to cover Argentina, Philippines and Sweden and beyond that we are looking towards the Middle East for Wave 6.

Our remit is to cover a wide range of markets and we welcome any future recommendations.

2010 Ratecard

The rate card for the remainder of 2010 will remain the same despite the increase in markets and increased range of past data.

We’re delighted to announce the launch of our mini tool that provides anyone with the free of charge chance to view and play with the GlobalWebIndex data, and more importantly to start developing unique insights on social media.

With the LITE version you can get a snapshot of what motivates your audience, what they do online, and how they feel about brands in social media.

This data has been extracted from the GlobalWebIndex Wave 2 dataset (January 2010)and it is NOT dummy for demonstration purposes only.

Currently, the GlobalWebIndex clients have access to Wave 3 (July 2010), hence, we can publicise some subscription only data.

Of course, Global Web Index LITE is only a very small percentage of the full set of the Global Web Index data. If you find this interesting and you can see the value behind the data and the online tool in your business, get in touch and we’ll talk you through the main analysis platform, how our clients prefer to use it to build global web and social media strategies and how it is being used to drive business revenue.

Feel free to use the data, embed it and share the tool online and don’t be shy to tell us what you think: globalwebindex@trendstream.net

If you are new to the research and want to find out more about how we do it, please visit: http://globalwebindex.net/find-out-more

To stay in touch @globalwebindex or to register interest in a demonstration http://globalwebindex.net/demo

How it works

You can select country, gender, age bands and an attitudinal outlook (if you want). The attitudes we predefined for demonstration purposes  are based on the people who agree with the following questions:

• Risk taker: “I like to take risks”
• Informers: “I regularly inform friends and family on new products and services”
• Positives: “I feel positive about the global economy”
• Strivers: “I’m always striving to achieve more in life”
• Premium Lovers: “I tend to buy the premium version of the product
• Internationals: “It is important to stay in touch with what is going on in the world”
• Thrill seeker: “I like to pursue a life of challenge, novelty and change”

Once you define your audience you can analyse them against 3 key areas and against the country average:

• Motivations for getting online: What do online consumers consider to be “very motivating”. This question covers all reasons for getting online, but look out for social motivations, such as “staying in touch with friends”, “sharing content” or “promoting myself”
• Social media behaviour: What online consumers have done in the last month online. There are also non social behaviours in there for comparison. In the main research we also cover lapsed usage and non involvement
• Brands in social media: Which kind of social marketing communications “improve the opinion of a brand” in the eyes of consumers. Again there are non social executions for comparison

Remember this is a very small portion of the research, but it still provides you with a unique global perspective on social media trends and impact.

Please get in touch to find out more on the full research and the subscription tool that can provide you access to a globally unique dataset and insights.

Professor Piskorski is currently Assistant professor of business strategy at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and he’s been Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
He has published papers about the use of power in organizational behaviour and he’s been mentioned on The New York Times with an article about social networks Friendster and Myspace.
On his page at the Harvard Business School  we can find many cases about understanding business and users of social networks.

Today we are honoured to be cited in his latest work which main focus is a cross-countries study on the use of social networks.
Professor Piskorski found a clear divide between East and West of the world usage of social networks.
Surprisingly, Asians appear to be much more engaged in the social web than western users.
“Chinese and Indian users, for example, are three times as likely to microblog, or tweet, as American users. They’re also twice as likely to share videos.”

Another interesting point is about the emerging BRIC countries, where users are just approaching the social sphere and hence they face an already developed panorama of social tools while western users had the time to settle their social behaviour gradually over the past years.
This means that emerging countries are more likely to adopt a balanced use of all available social services, contrary to western users which tend to focus on the more “traditional” and established services.

The original article is at http://hbr.org/2010/07/vision-statement-mapping-the-social-internet/ar/1

A snapshot of the 2010 global social media, an overview of data showing what consumers want from brands in this environment, as well as best in class examples and opportunities were the main areas covered in his presentation.

On the day he received an excellent feedback for the insights and thoughts but we are also interested for your comments!

Let us know what you think

In the latest wave of our global survey we introduced a question about the potential interest in innovative devices. The following chart shows the breakdown of the answers by countries related to the e-readers category.

Basically if the price is right there is massive demand in all markets.

Interestingly the levels of interest are similar across all markets and broadly in line with the US. At around 35%. This shows a potential market of millions, but not a PC or mobile scale market. Considering that very few people have experienced the device in the first place it is surprising that about one third of the sample shows a strong interest in it.

Unexpectedly, the interest in e-readers is almost evenly spread across all age groups (with Germany being the exception). This goes against the common knowledge that only sees young people as early adopters of technological gadgets. Instead, our research shows that almost all age groups are equally appealed to e-readers and this should be kept into consideration when developing content and applications for the e-reader market.

The Key Facts In This Report (feel free to share and use) are:

1. Globally, the Internet is still primarily a task based tool serving functional needs. People use it to make more informed purchase decisions, find news, find products, entertain and educate themselves
2. Looking specifically into social drivers, the more involved motivations such as creating content or publishing opinions are still niche
3. Fast growing internet markets are inherently more social and involved, sharing content and opinions across all social platforms such as blogging, micro-blogging and uploading video. This trend is reflected across all age groups
4. Content is increasingly more important motivation for online usage

Our research shows that online rights are massively undervalued.

We strongly believe that many people would choose to watch football online rather than through a TV, however in the vast majority of cases there is no legitimate way of watching live online. This is a major market, that is being completely neglected. This is particularly the case in China, where watching full length programming online is the norm. Think of the potential for streaming EPL (English Premiership League) in China alone. Priced correctly, per stream and by subscription, there is a potential for millions of paying viewers. Integrate this with a community, live chat, peer to peer gaming and merchandise stores and the potential is even bigger.

The following release was sent to the press yesterday. If you have any views on this let us know!

With kick off of the football World Cup less than a month away, the latest research from the Global Web Index, a collaboration between online market research provider Lightspeed Research and Trendstream, demonstrates the massive potential for generating revenue from online sports rights.The survey of 16,000 internet users includes people in many of the countries who will be taking part in the tournament in South Africa including the USA, England, Mexico and South Korea.

Watched online in the last month Source: Global Web Index Wave 2

Massive potential for streaming online

This year’s football World Cup will be the first where mass market online video streaming is a reality across the globe. Typically online rights are bundled with the TV deal as an ‘add on’, but the Global Web Index demonstrates that these rights are seriously undervalued, with FIFA potentially missing out on millions in revenue. The research shows there is already massive take-up of sports highlights and full length programming online (Chart 1). The Chinese lead the way where thanks to video platforms such as Youku and Tudou that carry full length programming as standard, 35% had watched full length programmers online in the last month and 27% had watched sports highlights. Other countries are not far behind.

Won’t pay, will pay

More crucially there is huge, untapped potential for monetizing streamed sport content. When asked what method of accessing live sports streams, there are very interesting differences in behaviour by country (Chart 2). Sports fans in India, South Korea, China, Mexico and Italy are most likely to choose to pay for their fix. Indians are most likely to pay to enjoy streamed sports without advertising (37%) followed by South Koreans (32%). In direct comparison, those living in the US and European markets in the study – prefer free access, with ads. However there is still a very large interest in paying, and one that if monetized could be far more lucrative than the advertising revenue. It is a similar picture for watching clips of sporting highlights.

“This research shows that online football rights for the 2010 World Cup are massively undervalued” said Tom Smith Director of Global Web Index. “There is proven appetite for streaming all sports online and more importantly, consumers are increasingly paying for it. There’s a whole new generation of younger consumers, as well as specific markets like China and South Korea where paying for sports online is quickly becoming the norm. This research shows that the days when online sports rights are thrown in as a sweetener with the TV rights may be about to be shown the red card. “

Would consider paying for online access. Source: Global Web Index Wave 2

Preferred form of payment. Global sample. Source: Global Web Index Wave 2

After launching last year it quickly became apparent that many of our users are not market researchers by trade, but strategists, planners and PR professionals.

It was for this reason that we decided to develop the current incarnation of the online research platform. It was designed to allow the sourcing of  global statistics easily, without having many years of data analysis experience.

We also want to enable organisations that have dedicated research resource to do more with the data, so from Wave 3 will make the data available in IMS Clear Decisions.

This will be available in all offices that have an online licence. There is an additional annual charge of £3K per organisation to cover the costs of data processing and delivery. If you are a current IMS subscriber this is the only cost. If you are not a current user of IMS we can arrange as many licences as you need. These work on a per desk basis and are £1.3K per annum. All support, training and installation are delivered by IMS.

• Additional private questions e.g bespoke segmentation
• Brand categories: We currently collect data on mobile and fashion categories (Awareness, ownership / purchase / advocacy), which can be made available to clients for additional fee (please contact us for more details if you are interested in these categories). If you would like to add additional brand categories please get in touch. These can be used to understand the performance of brands against key social media audiences and have proved to be very valuable data in terms of setting social brand strategy.
• Rerunning the survey in additional markets  alongside the main data set
• Rerunning the survey against a niche audience to benchmark alongside the main data set

New Markets

We are committed to providing the broadest global reach as possible. Wave 3 will also see an expansion into new markets with Poland and Malaysia scheduled to come on board. We are also aiming to add Indonesia, South Africa, Sweden and Argentina in Wave 4.

New question areas

One area of focus that will expand in Wave 3 is mobile, which will be expanded to include a question on mobile motivations. Another area will be, to gain an understanding of the passive majority who do not contribute by asking questions on the barriers to involvement. We will also be providing further localisation of the sites that we include in the behavioural questions e.g where do you blog, where do you have profile etc  

Any further suggestions are appreciated.

Please send any comments and queries on the above to tom@trendstream.net