Ireland based Tweetrush, a new analytics service around Twitter, launched a few minutes ago. For now it’s fairly straightforward – it shows aggregate Twitter usage by all users, and you can drill down to the per user level as well.
Total Twitter usage according to TweetRush is approximately 850,000 messages per day, which is far less than the 3 million/day that we reported on in late April. Tweetrush isn’t able to track direct messages or messages from private users, but the numbers are still much lower than anticipated. Either something is wrong with the data, or Twitter usage is far lower than we expected.
The data is coming via Gnip, which was given access to Twitter’s XMPP firehose last month. Tweetrush founder AJ McKee says they believe the data is being under-reported based on scraping checks they’ve done on Twitter, but that for now Twitter isn’t helping them or Gnip correct data usage. Now that they’ve launched, perhaps Twitter will correct any issues.
The site is a demonstration of the technology behind a in-development analytics product for developers called Rush Hour, which will be launched later next year.
Well done guys, another great product to come out of Cork, best of luck with it
yes, Cork. Twitter-central for Twitter apps.
Another Twitter app from Cork, Ireland!
yes, because even watching grass grow is an exciting past time in Cork, Ireland
Excellent work by Tweetrush – what is it with the Cork contingent and Twitter? Keep it up, guys.
Any thoughts on why the numbers are so low for Twitter? Everyone I run into seems to be using Twitter.
http://kreuzer3...g-to-tweetrush/
Tweets may have gone down because of the SMS slap.
We began collecting Twitter results in SM2 several months ago and a check of our social media warehouse two weeks ago came up with 45 million search results in our Twitter collector. A result is a Tweet with accompanying meta data.
To put it into perspective, the complete warehouse count at that time was 550 million results with up to 30 data points for each from blogs, wikis, social networks, microblogs, UGC, etc.
Twitter far outranked other microblogs and things like Friendfeed.
Mike,
If you’re interested in twitter analytics, you can also check us out.
Regards,
Pierre
http://www.twitscoop.com
The numbers are exactly right. I’ve been doing twitter research for a few months now (as part of my thesis).
Arrington – you, Scoble, and others hyped up twitter to the point that non-inflated traffic numbers were being regularly ignored and inflated ones published. You shouldn’t be surprised.
I still don’t know a single person who uses Twitter.
Same here, and I would consider myself tech savvy. I also have yet to come across an actual twitter post (you’d think you would be able to maybe search these from the Twitter home page?). Frankly seems like a poor execution with a limited audience.
I third this.
Fourth.
for some reason it is very hard for the twitter elite to realize that the vast majority of people, even the tech savvy, do not care about or use twitter.
So if Tweetrush’s data holds up to further scrutiny and it turns out there aren’t as many people using Twitter or users aren’t tweeting as often as was anticipated, why is that? Overall lack of interest? Nobody’s come up with the killer reason for using it? Still too early in the game to tell?
Michelle Rafter
the type of person who twitters (tweets?) is the type of person who blogs, so obviously the bloggosphere is going to have an inflated picture of how many people are using it. I still can’t think of a good twitter use case for an average person that can’t be achieved through IM.
I too think Twitter is over-hyped but one possible use case is as an alternative to 911–say during a natural disaster like an earthquake. If someone is stuck in their car or under debris somewhere but have access to their handheld/wireless connection.
I just checked my own personal stats VS what Tweetrush shows them as, and Tweetrush under counted my Tweets by 25%, more importantly it did not include all the Tweets I deleted. Am I the only one who deletes their Tweets?
More importantly then the current number of users however (IMO) is all the different ways that Twitter is viral… and their existing growth I believe is over 1000% annually (as per current compete.com data)
What? Why would you delete your tweets?
Life is too short to delete your tweets.
Of course it’s lower than expected.. there are only so many of these ridiculous little sites that people have time for in the day. Just because they are popular in certain circles, they seem to be popular everywhere sometimes. I don’t know anyone who uses twitter personally.
Usage is much lower as expected by…the same valley echo chamber crew that is always twittering about twitter and how much everyone is twittering? Gee, what a surprise.
I wonder if the low numbers have anything to do with having a completely useless product.
Honestly, I have tried to approach Twitter with an open mind, but I see no point in sending a message to friends about my meatloaf I just got served. Seriously…all hype, no use, and apparently less users than the pundits would like to admit.
I use Twitter and see it as a bit of fun (which I believe was the original intention). The so called early adopters seem to think it’s a vital way to communicate with people and as stated by other commentators, lots of twitter traffic is about twitter itself.
Well done the Cork lads!
adam
Don’t forget that those numbers don’t include tweets from people who have protected accounts. Anyone have any idea what % of Twitter accounts are protected?
I, and many others I know, protected our accounts when we realized they were being scraped by facebook apps – too uncontrollable
I find it funny when people say that twitter is overhyped and they haven’t found a use for it. I’ve found so many great local people who use twitter that I’ve actually decreased the number of tweets slightly because I don’t really feel like spamming what has essentially become a community bulletin board.
Where did the 3M/day number come from?
Even though 850,000 is lower than what was previously expected it is still pretty gosh darn high. Twitter is doing really well lately and this just proves it, now all we need is track and we’ll be doing fine.
Oh .Fear the wrath of the twitter gods upon thee as you haven’t used it in a while;) . Well . As some one mentioned , twitter is a fun medium . And it still works with the sms in India .
Aaarghhh ..Double post .. Well . While some of us friends used twitter profusely , i am in the midst of a 300 odd people who don’t even know what it is !
. From the IT hub of India , bangalore !
Well done to the Cork lads – great to see it from the real capital of Ireland!!!
While most of these comments have focused on Twitter and its merits or not – few people have latched on to the fact that this is only a beta.
So I am looking forward to see what the guys provide next in RushHour, as in my view this TweetRush is just a bit of PR stunt – and the real commercial proposition is yet to be seen.
Any dates for RushHour?
Anyone that says Twitter doesn’t have a use, clearly isn’t monitoring their brand well. Yes, Twitter may not be mainstream, but it’s a fantastic and accessible way of checking the conversations taking place around you.
More often that not, breaking news comes from Twitter rather than traditional sites. The interesting times are now that it’s starting to leash itself into the wild… I think this is just the start!
It’s quite possible that 749K of those reported tweets came from Arrington, the only actual user of the system.
good topic