Proof That Twitter Is For Marketing

Written on February 6, 2009 by Jesse Newhart in Twitter
22 Comments - Leave a comment!

I was screwing around experimenting with the TwitterSheep Twitter app today.  If you haven’t tried it, the TwitterSheep application creates a word cloud from the words in your followers’ profile biographies. 

I got the idea that if I made a word cloud from the followers of some of the most popular Twitter users, I could get a good picture of the main topics that Twitterers were interested in.

For my experiment I chose @KevinRose creator of Digg who has over 99,000 followers, The ubiquitous @Scobleizer who has over 55,000 followers, @GuyKawasaki of Alltop fame, who rings in at just over 59,000 and the English actor, comedian, and second most followed person on Twitter, @StephenFry who has an impressive 143,000+ followers.

I figured that if I made a Twittersheep cloud of these Twitterati I’d get a pretty good idea of what subjects the Twittersphere was most passionate about.

Many Twitter idealists cringe at the thought of Twitter being used for anything marketing related, so some of you may be sad to see that the word marketing featured so prominently in these word clouds.  

It didn’t suprise or sadden me to discover this however, believing as I do in the power of social media, and Twitter in particular, to connect people with the products and services they desire and vice-versa.

If this does get you down, read on. There will be something to lift your idealistic spirits at the very end.

Here are the Twittersheep results for the aforementioned Twitter elite: 

@KevinRose

kevinrose-ts

@Scobleizer

scobleizer-ts

@GuyKawasaki

guykawasaki-ts

And the inimitable @StephenFry

stephenfry-ts

Tags: , , ,
  • Just because they are using the word "marketing," that doesn't necessarily indicate what they are doing on Twitter. It only indicates that they use the word. It doesn't indicate that people who use Twitter want to be sold something.

    If the word clouds could be used in the way you suggest, then why don't we go to Twitter for music, since that is also a prominently featured word for these people?

    Just because they are using the word often, that doesn't indicate anything about Twitter's usability for that function, IMO. It only means that people are talking about it. For all we know, they may be talking negatively about it.

    I suspect that people read the blogs of these men because they are educational and/or entertaining. If you want to attract people (online or offline) you need to be at least one of those. ;-)
  • Jen
    I definitely agree with David Fisher's comment. I have thought about the same thing. But also, we do market to each other. Take this post for instance - I found it through Twitter. This is a form of marketing to get people to comment on a blog post, is it not? People might click around, might keep your name in mind when they need a certain service that they can't do themselves.
  • I get "marketing" in my cloud too. Could it be classified as network marketing?
  • I was surprised to find the same term's prominence in my own 'canvas' - excellent analysis.

    I'd love to see a 'live cloud' widget like this which linked to conversations from those I followed with a click on a term.

    Well spotted, well presented, thanks - has set me thinking.
  • Even if seems that we're marketing to each other, is that a bad thing? We're also teaching each other about this new frontier...and providing links to cool trends and insights. I'm enjoying the opportunity to learn how it all works on behalf of my web clients. Thanks for your perspective Jesse.
  • Nice article. I find it a good way for attracting interest to my site/blog but I mainly use it to share ideas with fellow designers.
  • HI Jesse

    The actual data is taken from the "bios" of these twitterati (is that a real word?)followers, not the content they're producing, so this result might be a bit misleading.

    You would get a more realistic spread of results by choosing celebrities where the majority of the followers are normal people rather than leaders in the technology field.

    To back up my point notice how the cloud was different for StephenFry and ChrisDJMoyles has nearly 34000 with marketing not even showing up.

    Overall a bit misleading, but the subject should get you lots of traffic from marketers, so congratualtions on your traffic generation strategy.

    Andrew
  • Andrew thanks you for your comment. I didn't realize the data was taken from followers bios. I edited the post accordingly. The idea behind the <del datetime="2009-02-07T20:50:38+00:00">screwing around</del> experiment still holds true and in certain respects, the data behind the bios could be seen as a harder indicator of a Twitter users interests.

    I see your point about @StephenFry and @ ChrisDJMoyles and I was trying to exemplify that with the last graphic in the post.
    I definitely wasn't misleading overall, and as far as a traffic generation strategy, I just write about things that interest me whether music, culture, tech, or social media. If anyone enjoys the things I write or the media I post, it truly is some very tasty icing on the cake. : )
  • Great post... and great idea... you are very clever.
  • Excellent analysis.

    Sincerely,
    Bill Romanos
blog comments powered by Disqus
Jesse helps people build loyal audiences using the power of the social web. Connect today and join the over 40,000 people already following Jesse & his internet adventures.