October 29, 2008

First State of the Twitosphere in Costa Rica

A while ago a commenter on this blog asked if I could also analyze the twitosphere in his country, Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the east and south, the Pacific Ocean to the west and south and the Caribbean Sea to the east (source : Wikipedia). I have never been to Costa Rica, so I do not have personal memories or opinions on this country. Nevertheless, I found it a good idea to have a closer look at the usage of Twitter in Costa Rica.

The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in Costa Rica. Twitter user search is temporary disabled, so I cannot inform you on the number of Twitter users in Costa Rica according to Twitter itself. Twitdir reports 338 Twitter users for location Costa Rica.

Based on the location info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 507 Twitter users in Costa Rica, still active users. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in Costa Rica will probably exceed 507. With a population of 4.133 million people (source Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for Costa Rica is one Twitter account for every 8,152 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in Costa Rica
The graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts from Costa Rica. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph. Twitter started late in Costa Rica. The oldest Twitter users date back from March 2006. Only 8 months later first Costa Ricans started using Twitter.



Oldest Twitter accounts from Costa Rica
http://twitter.com/gringuitica - Erin - first message on January 11, 2007
http://twitter.com/darcia - David Arcia - first message on February 14, 2007
http://twitter.com/lizrincon - Liz Rincon - first message on March 16, 2007
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - first message on March 18, 2007
http://twitter.com/soloesteban - Esteban Solorzano - first message on March 20, 2007
http://twitter.com/405 - Cuatro Cero Cinco - first message on March 22, 2007
http://twitter.com/MariHo - Mario HB - first message on March 28, 2007
http://twitter.com/nityananda - Nityananda das - first message on March 29, 2007
http://twitter.com/conejita236 - Angel Ackermann - first message on April 6, 2007
http://twitter.com/BarryStev - Barry Stevens - first message on April 22, 2007
http://twitter.com/Toxicomaniac - toxic - first message on April 26, 2007

Private or public
59 Twitter acounts from Costa Rica or 12% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 84 Twitter accounts from Costa Rica or 17% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Costa Rica follows 31 Twitter accounts.



Top 10 following
http://twitter.com/iecr - Spanishinstitute - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/muchacostarica - MuchaCostaRica.Com - 1,727 following
http://twitter.com/NicoPisani - NicoPisani - 655 following
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 493 following
http://twitter.com/iCostaRicaTV - iCostaRicaTV - 425 following
http://twitter.com/jenfos - jenfos - 418 following
http://twitter.com/ReverendDoctor - TheReverendDoctor - 418 following
http://twitter.com/remediosgraphic - remediosgraphic - 310 following
http://twitter.com/AlexOtarola - Otárola - 213 following
http://twitter.com/stevekatz - stevekatz - 212 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 40 Twitter users from Costa Rica or 8% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from Costa Rica has 24 followers.



Top 10 followers
http://twitter.com/muchacostarica - MuchaCostaRica.Com - 606 followers
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 518 followers
http://twitter.com/NicoPisani - NicoPisani - 443 followers
http://twitter.com/jenfos - jenfos - 283 followers
http://twitter.com/iecr - Spanishinstitute - 283 followers
http://twitter.com/stevekatz - stevekatz - 261 followers
http://twitter.com/SEOCharlie - SEOCharlie - 236 followers
http://twitter.com/fusildechispas - cristian cambronero - 196 followers
http://twitter.com/remediosgraphic - remediosgraphic - 158 followers
http://twitter.com/gringuitica - Erin - 153 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from Costa Rica is 118. 44 Twitter users (or 9%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find the top 10.



Top 10 updates
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 3.715 updates
http://twitter.com/berylcorea - berylcorea - 2.883 updates
http://twitter.com/reiterstahl - RQR - 2.248 updates
http://twitter.com/SEOCharlie - SEOCharlie - 1.957 updates
http://twitter.com/OzaCR - OzaCR - 1.804 updates
http://twitter.com/willvv - Will Vásquez Vásquez - 1.621 updates
http://twitter.com/zoncho - Carlos Murillo - 1.461 updates
http://twitter.com/yeco - Yeco - 1.337 updates
http://twitter.com/olesha - olesha - 1.209 updates
http://twitter.com/Rafa - Rafael Gonzalez - 1.207 updates

Degree of activity
37% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
30% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have not published a message for more than a month.
12% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have published at least message on in the period between 7 and 31 days (older than a week, but in the last month).

12% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 9% of the Twitter accounts from Costa Rica not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
Costa Rica is a relatively small country in Central America. It is not known for a significant contribution to what's happening on the internet or in the blogosphere of twitosphere. Neverthelessm there is an active Twitter community in Costa Rica. This community started rather late, but it is growing at a relatively high speed.

October 14, 2008

BarackObama followers

Twitter User BarackObama has an incredible amount of followers. This Twitter account follows every Twitter user that follows BarackObama. Currently Twitter User BarackObama is following over 100,000 other Twitter users. A rough estimation of the number of Twitter messages per day per users can be made of two sources. Twiturly scans between 200,000 and 250,000 Twitter messages per day, TwitDir reports 3.18 million Twitters users. This leads to the following calculations.

Number of Twitter Users (TwitDir) : 3,183,544
Daily Twitter messages (Twiturly) : 200,000 - 250,000
Number of Twitter messages per day and user : 0,063 - 0,079
BarackObama followers : 101.350
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per day : 6.367 - 7.959
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per hour : 265 - 332
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per minute : 4.4 - 5.5

It seems quite unlikely that Barack Obama himself would read all these Twitter messages. I even doubt it that a single person is capable of reading all these messages (5 per minute, 24 hours per day).

October 13, 2008

Twinfluence

Influence of a Twitter account does not solely depends on the number of people who are following the Twitter account. It also depends on the size of the network of the followers of Twitter account. Twinfluence applies the concept of social capital to propose a set of new influence measures for Twitter users (from the about page).

Reach: Reach is the number of followers a Twitterer has (first-order followers), plus all of their followers (second-order followers). Reach is a measurement of potential audience and listeners, a best estimate of the number of people that a given Twitterer could quickly get a message to.

Velocity: Velocity merely averages the number of first- and second-order followers attracted per day since the Twitterer first established their account. The larger the number is, the faster that Twitterer has accumulated their influence. Of course, this number could jump significantly with the addition of a few high-profile followers.

Social Capital: Tthe average first-order network of a Twitterer's followers. A high value indicates that most of that Twitterer's followers have a lot of followers themselves.

Centralization: This is a measure of how much a Twitterer's influence (reach) is invested in a small number of followers. Centralization scores range from 0% (completely decentralized) to a theoretical 100% (completely dependent on one Twitterer).

Efficiency: The more people you follow, the more time you have to spend reading and filtering tweets. Efficiency is a measure of how many people a Twitterer had to follow in order to build up their reach, as a percentage.

A few examples to illustrate these new influence measures.

BarackObama, the most followed Twitter user


SteveRubel, a digital marketer working at Edelman Digital


TwitFacts, the Twitter user I created for this blog



These new influence measures are interesting. They have however also their limitations. Influence should be measured for persons. Barack Obama uses various channels to illustrate his influence : speaches, debates, personal encounters, his website, his Twitter account, … On a lower scale everyone is active on different channels. Steve Rubel writes on his blog, he writes columns, he speaks at various events, he works for various clients as a digital marketer at Edelman Digital. On addition to that, he has a stream of Twitter messages. Influence can be measured for each of these channels : number of blog posts linking to Steve Rubel's blog, number of readers and comments on his columns, number of speaking engagements, number of Edelman clients wanting to work with him, ... All these measures are only capable of capturing a tiny aspect of someone's influence. Influence should ideally be measured for a person, not for a specific channel. Twinfluence is however an interesting approach for a specific domain for which no influence measures were available.

Twinfluence uses a clever way to deal with the Twitter API. All requests to the Twitter API are performed with the Twitter user credentials supplied by the user. After several queries, there is a big risk that a user will receive this error message :

October 12, 2008

Twitter Top 100 lists compared

In a previous post (Top Twitter Users) I listed several sites where lists of top Twitter users can be found. I wanted to get an idea on the quality of these lists. Do they contain the same Twitter users ? Do they provide the same data ?

I considered four top lists of Twitter users ranked by the number of followers.
1. Twitdir Top 100 followed : number 1 on the list has 94937 followers, there are 6586 followers for number 100
2. Twittercounter The top 100 most popular Twitter users : number 1 on the list has 94600 followers, there are 7156 followers for number 100
3. Twitterholic Top 100 based on Followers : number 1 on the list has 94894 followers, there are 6562 followers for number 100
4. Twittown Top 150 followers (only first 100 considered) : number 1 on the list has 6941 followers, there are 986 followers for number 100

The four lists combined count 179 different Twitter users. It is clear that the top 100 list from Twittown is outdated. Twitter user @BarackObama has only 5441 followers according to Twittown, in reality this Twitter user has 94937 followers.

Let's compare the three other list. The three lists combined cound 122 different Twitter users, see table below.

Twitdir has the highest values for number of followers. Twittercounter has the lowest values.
* If Twitdir is compared to Twitterholic, the differences are up to 43 followers.
* If Twitdir is compared to Twittercounter the differences are up to 337 followers.
* If Twitterholic is compared to Twittercounter the differences are up to 294 followers.

It looks like that Twitdir Top 100 followed has the most actual data, although some Twitter users are missing. On the other hand Twitdir is the least user friendly. The top 100 is presented in 10 parts, each consisting of 10 Twitter users. Furthermore it takes an awful lot of time to load the 10 pages. If you want a quick overview of all top 100 Twitter users, I would recommend the Twitterholic Top 100.

TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
BarackObama949379489494600
kevinrose66341--66251
leolaporte577715776257703
cnnbrk438804385743628
alexalbrecht386233861838595
MarsPhoenix--3623736182
JasonCalacanis361483613036083
Scobleizer356053559035473
Veronica333933338233333
twitter----31820
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
THErealDVORAK314763147131399
macrumors313763137531353
hotdogsladies276172761427577
TechCrunch267222670526679
ijustine236792367523636
ricksanchezcnn231762317223152
twittervision22982--22915
guykawasaki210872108421061
ev196921968319635
CaliLewis196611965619647
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
Twitterrific193571934419333
rtm19287--19241
StephenColbert188881888118692
chrispirillo187971879018770
wilw187691876018740
patricknorton183651836518345
biz181481814418076
013----18134
twitlive--1746517460
dooce172801727717077
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
laughingsquid167971678516762
chrisbrogan163581634316322
garyvee163561633916267
bloggersblog159011590115889
ambermacarthur154271542315419
darthvader148641485214830
woot146361462714588
gruber144031439814378
hashtags----14220
zappos140881408013983
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
mashable133931338213356
jowyang130741306813044
NotHenryRollins12924----
TwitPic127811277612747
feliciaday125401253412441
zefrank--1236012332
davewiner119621195911947
hodgman118461184211764
dlprager--1181511806
drhorrible--1169811641
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
problogger116521164911631
jakemarsh--1159811600
loiclemeur114351142611403
majornelson10846--10834
Larry--10843--
newmediajim108201081610785
timoreilly108001079210714
DannyTRS107551075510748
Ed10676----
Ed_Dale--1067310646
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
WilHarris106411064010631
wordpress106251061710545
jeffcannata105081050710499
UstreamTV104551044010433
Ihnatko10336--10332
skydiver103081030010265
mollywood102671026510260
twitter_status10003--10009
jack992199149881
zeldman984698459816
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
jonathancoulton9683--9663
SteveJobs9677--9639
macworld963996389603
jkottke961296079592
TUAW950094959482
steverubel942894249418
technorati937493699330
brianshaler933393329331
om--93149292
xenijardin911691129100
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
nytimes878387838759
s----8711
osen----8632
SethGodin8623----
revision3--85558535
cnn842684248410
warrenellis829882938263
gapingvoid8268--8263
missrogue814481418129
factoryjoe806080558050
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
socialmediaclub804780368023
digg802180188000
nprpolitics7986--7909
simplebits778077757767
sarahlane767076637638
Maggie755375547530
acedtect752975277523
BreakingNewsOn747574747462
DanRaine734973497338
Damiano733973327330
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
Dizzed7269----
jeffpulver724972467239
springnet720072007197
PhillyD--7195--
buckhollywood717771797161
CNETNews716571627156
waynesutton71477144--
StephenTColbert70267028--
timer7010----
mybloglog7004----
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
fredwilson69876983--
lonelysandwich--6927--
seesmic6795----
Pistachio67926787--
Zadi67466733--
mozillafirefox--6745--
Borat--6674--
adamcurry66216618--
Mickipedia65866582--
tferriss--6582--
TwitterUserTwitdir top 100Twitterholic top 100Twittercounter top 100
ryanblock--6568--
briansolis--6562--

These figures presented above date from Friday October 10, 2008.

October 10, 2008

Top Twitter Users

For those who are interested in how to find top Twitter users, I have created a collection of links to top lists of Twitter users according to several criteria.

In the first place there are global rankings.

1. Twitterholic

Twitterholic.com offers Top 100 lists based on Followers, Friends and Updates.

2. Twitdir

Twitdir presents Top 100 followed, Top 100 updaters, Top 100 favouriters and Top 100 followers lists.

3. Twittercounter

Twittercounter has a list called The top 100 most popular Twitter users.

4. Twittown

Twittown, the unofficial Twitter community, offers Top 150 followers, Top 150 updates and Top 150 following lists.

5. Twitter Grader

Twitter Grader gives you a grade based on the power of your Twitter profile. It also offers the list with the highest ranked Twitter users.

6. Twitterposter

TwitterPoster is a visual application based on Twitter API. It provides a visual representation of the degree of influence of the Twitter users. It does not present a top list as such, but only top Twitter users are shown.


There are also specialized rankings of Twitter users.

7. Twitstat

Twitstats offers various lists of Twitter users followed by @twitstat : Top 10 today, yesterday, most engaging, most social, happy people, funny people, angry people, tired people, most replies, perfect tweets.

8. Top analyst twitterers / analyst twitter index

On the Technobabble blog, a post in July presented a ranking of analysts.

9. Newspapers that Twitter

Rankings of American newspapers offering Twitter feeds can be found on the graphicdesigner blog. There is a July ranking and an August ranking.

10. Unofficial 2008 Top 50 Tweeples

Finally you can always submit your own Twitter account for the Unofficial 2008 Top 50 Tweeples list.