If Twitter needed to pay for the media coverage the company and its free service get across the board, it would have spent almost as much in 30 days as the $55 million that has been invested in the company since its inception in 2006. That’s the claim of VMS, a media intelligence company that monitors news coverage on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet.
AdvertisingAge got more details from the company about its research, which pegs the total free media coverage given to Twitter the past month to be worth $48 million. As AdAge points out, that’s about half of what Microsoft plans to spend marketing Bing.
Online, Twitter received 2.73 billion impressions, undoubtedly some of them thanks to TechCrunch. Television contributed to 57% of the PR value, newspapers 37% and magazines 5%, according to VMS. As the monitoring company’s CEO Peter Wengryn explains, the total coverage may be much higher than what the firm could possibly monitor, since it doesn’t take into account mentions in smaller newspapers in the United States and media coverage in the rest of the world.
Either way, it’s a LOT of coverage, acknowledges Gary Getto, VP-integrated media intelligence at VMS:
“This is huge. It’s very, very high. In fact, we looked at online coverage of Twitter vs. Google. Twitter is running significantly higher than Google and I didn’t think anything was more popular than Google.”
How long will Twitter continue to be the social media darling in the media? Long enough to eventually reach 1 billion users and become the “pulse of the planet”?
And more importantly, when will it start turning the mountains of attention, traffic and users it is getting into cold, hard cash?
(Image via MaximumPC)
Personally, I feel the value in twitter is not monetary but the data that they hold. It’s like google buying youtube, they control online video even if it does lose them millions every month. Twitter could well have huge value to a company like google, even though it doesn’t directly bring in money it could open up other opportunities.
Twitter will be of great value monetarily too once they start cashing on its influence and immense popularity.
Thats true, they are growing the members base at the moment and once they start monetizing them it would make tonnes of money!
I agree. Right now they are going through the recruiting phase. But soon they’ll switch to the monetizing phase. That’s gonna be one big payday for Twitter.
Techcrunch should reverse the posting order of comments so that the most recent show up at the top. Check out TED.
It’s more fun. It democratizes commenting. Everybody gets a little airtime. The way it is now, on highly commented blogs, the first comments get all the attention and the end comments get no attention. It’s like going to the cafeteria and the first guy gets all the food while the rest just get to watch.
On low commented blogs i’s not relevant. On highly commented blogs it’s clearly a violation of the Second Amendment.
Some of that credit belongs to you techcrunch for the whole Twitter hack debacle.
Once they start the “Monetizing phase” users will bolt to better sites without annoying “monetization” and Twitter will become today’s Friendster.
Uhm, could you please do, like, a post on the post on Twitter that says that posts on Twitter are very valuable?
Thanks.
No, but we tweeted this post, does that work?
its funny because twitters user retention rate is horrible.
noone enjoys twitter, they just sign up because its forcefed through the media
you dont understand how happy i was when i found out that twitter was hacked, and all their emails were compromised. Biz stone is an arrogant moron. People take anything spoken against twitter so personally, they need to relax. Twitter sucks major ass anyway. Shitter is automatically wrong no matter what
Also the twitter notes that leaked from the emails read like a digg comment. Horrible, short, lacking any substance.
i will say though i was proud when arrington leaked the documents. He should have leaked everything, and also not have contacted twitter.
oh one more thing
TechCrunch did not punch Twitter in the face. They were leaked documents that are interesting, as they show the inner workings of Twitter. They ran them as a story. They ARE a story.
It shows that management at twitter isn’t all that bright. Everything leaked read like crap. Again, short on substance. Words typed for the sake of typing them.
deleting my twitter account is a good idea because of the leak, too. I don’t want to be connected to anything that uses the password “password” ANYWHERE.
What are you on about? I could name thousands of people that use twitter religiously, sure quite a few people do quit after a few days but that happens with every website. Twitter user retention rate may be lower than average, but the activity from the active users is greater than average.
Stop being butt hurt over such a simple website being so brilliant.
millions may be twittering religiously, but do they matter? they sure think they do.
the only area where twitter has strong content is where it competes with fan magazines – a random starlet twittering about having just farted is about as interesting as the typical fan magazine interview.
I see twitter earning good money from (obnoxious) advertising on famour people’s twitter pages some day, but surely not from the millions of twats who think they are writing something of consequence…
not having a good day basementdad ?
@greg: Check his twitter.
My impression is those were meeting notes and not full blown reports. Thus, you EXPECT them to be short and concise. And unstructured to boot.
There’s no doubt that twitter gets tons of attention in the media, but are the figures too high? for comparison, if you buy coverage on the web using online PR companies or marketplace services like commentino http://snipr.com/nkvfu , you would pay around $1 per exposure which will give around 50m exposures in media per month. sounds like a big number even for twitter
It’s interesting to see those PR percentages. IMO Twitter is already the pulse of the planet…if you want to know what’s been going on in the world, Twitter will let you know. 1 billion users though, I don’t think so.
Free marketing means your product is very viral. Kudos to twitter!
I wonder how many of those 1 billion user will have an account for months like me, but still zero tweets…?
Could you please post any other topics twitter twitter OMG is any other topics on Techcrunch ?
I wonder what will happen to twitter when all this free hype and love dies out?
ask friends reunited when myspace and facebook came out…
and all this has come at zero spend for twitter!?
Proving once again — Create Value for users, the money will roll right in…only not very apt in this case
Yes I will agree with that figure. They get covered left right and center!
I wonder why they get so much coverage. They must have a really good PR team. At the same time the young adults and teenagers don’t use tweeter as much as they use facebook. So who are Tweeter users?
This reminds me of a quote by Twitter CEO Evan Williams that I found in a list of funny things CEOs have tweeted…
“There are basically two types of businesspeople: Those who see money as the ends and those who see money as the means.”
Full list here
No, there are two kinds of businesspeople: those who make money and those who don’t.
That doesn’t even make sense…
Twitter may be limited to a specific demographic but it continues to grow at an exponential rate. The short-bite nature of tweeting is all about convenience and we’re a convenient society. For better or worse we’re not going to change too soon.
I can see why twitter is a media darling.
Wow, I didn’t know advertising on TechCrunch costs $55 million a month.
We’ll give you a 20% discount if you decide before the end of this week
One more twitter story, I am ready to puke. I almost need a twitter filter from all the popular blogs. Whats wrong with the media? Look at Mashable, Techcruch, Venturebeat, and thousand other respectable blogs and all of them are ONLY writing about three things: iPhone apps, Twitter, FaceBook. Yawn…
This is the best Twitter post I’ve read.
Still think Twitter is a turd, but, nonetheless it continues to be flavor of the month.
I would have thought it was a higher monthly value, as Twitter’s exposure is non-stop.
If they want to keep all this good press they will need to follow the Robin Censorship Plan. Down with any terms that could ever be considered offensive to anyone EVER!
What I would like to read about Twitter is the real Twitter that users experience every day – accidentally and erroneously suspended accounts, banked Followers that mysteriously disappear (in the thousands), multiple down times every day, constantly changing “rules,” and the favoritism shown to certain brands and companies. If you’re going to make a story of Twitter, at least tell the whole story so that your readers know what they’re going to be up against.
We’re trying to make the best of Twitter, but we wouldn’t be investors with the company’s current track record of problems and horrific customer support. There is no doubt they can have a bright future, but there remains much work to be done.
Twitter is HOT right now, but should everyone be adding fuel to the fire? Companies should be riding the Twitter wave, but only if it works for their business. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon – make sure you can actually measure whether yout investments are paying off. To read more if Twitter is right for your business, go to http://domusinc.blogspot.com/.
How annoying is the retweet link that has appeared on TC. Maybe you can place it even closer to the Comment. I bet you’d score a few extra errant clicks.
Thank god for Firefox Adblock. I was able to rid my browser of the annoying retweet button. I highly recommend it!
We’re still fine-tuning the layout, bare with us.
What we have to see how long does this go on, They are on course to become the pulse of the Internet – agreed, but is this euphoria going to carry on or die down? and how soon?
Twitter is most usable to media and public, it’s better than than FB in my opinion and more useful to newscasting.
Nat
http://www.loopcity.net/
Ugh, excuse me Nat, but although Twitter is the bomb, it is NOT better, and repeat NOT better than Facebook. You’ve got it TWISTED..LOL
Q: How long will Twitter continue to be the social media darling in the media? Long enough to eventually reach 1 billion users and become the “pulse of the planet”?
A: Until the next HOT thing comes along and that next HOT thing can be just around the corner…
Twitter… the most overrated service of all time!
I really love Twitter! I’ve discovered that you can find out so much great information and websites so quickly!
Just scanning my page of ‘followers’ and ‘followings’ I get to know about so many interesting things,wonderful people, fantastic opportunities, plus it’s great for networking!
I always tell my friends that Myspace is like an old Country road,Facebook is like a Street road, and then there is Twitter…,The Super Highway! : ).
Keep singing that sweet music in my ears Twitter, and I will keep dancing to your tune! : ).
Our TV Trends service can also give you some idea of how popular twitter is on traditional television. Here’s a graph comparing relative mentions of twitter and facebook on national TV:
http://www.snap...t=&zoomEnd=