In today's video, we cover the Twitter IPO, something the industry has been anticipating ever since the Facebook IPO. Twitter had a very quick impact on internet marketing, and shares an incredible amount of links every minute. It will be interesting to see how the IPO will affect Twitter's direction, its role in social media, and how it will have an impact on internet marketing going forward.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hello, and welcome to our video today on the Twitter IPO. I am Chad Hill and I have Adam Stetzer with me.
Hey, good afternoon, Chad. Everyone's always abuzz about these big, social media, Wall Street moves. You can remember a few years ago-- Facebook, and going way back as Google was growing. People always want to know, what does this mean? How's it going to change internet marketing? Fascinating stuff.
So what can we tell our users today about what we've learned about what's coming up from the Twitter IPO, and why they should care?
Yeah, it's definitely another big moment in social media with the 2013 Twitter IPO. But let's talk about some of the stats and what Twitter has been able to accomplish since 2006 when they launched-- in March of 2006. They currently have 200 million active users. There are over 400 million tweets every day. Wow. 80% of those people tweeting are coming in via mobile devices. And they're basically reaching that ever-important 18 to 29-year-old demographic. That's where a big chunk of the people using Twitter are positioned in that group.
And then according to eMarketer data, Twitter is estimated to have basically 583 million in ad revenue and is projecting a billion next year. And I guess one other interesting stat-- Justin Bieber is the most widely-followed person on Twitter. So a lot of really interesting stats, Adam. What do you think?
That is interesting. And it does seem like there's a lot of celebrity news. And some of people who are addicted to Twitter through a mobile device are following maybe different things than some of our small business customers might be looking at.
But there's been a serious investment in Twitter to grow it to where it is. And it's no surprise to me they want to head to Wall Street with this Twitter IPO-- both to recoup some investment from the early folks who were in, but also to build up their bank account. Because if it's anything like what we saw Facebook do, and we've seen Google evolve, of course as well, they're going to launch all sorts of new and interesting advertising opportunities as they seek to monetize the property well beyond what they've done today.
And I know that typically for end users, the monetization processes is a little uncomfortable, and usually there's a lot of complaints. But I think on the internet marketing side there's probably an up side, because we will generally see new and interesting ways to position ads as well as new and creative ways to track people. Always there are privacy concerns and things like the way Google's done with retargeting, and remarketing, and maybe emerging in Twitter.
Absolutely. And I think one of the things that's interesting is that as we've pushed at other parts of our business on content marketing, Twitter really is a great complement to the really the focus people are putting in the content marketing these days. Because if you think about what Google traditional search is all about, it's really about things that are sort of timeless type of searches. How do you do this? Or how you do that?
Whereas Twitter really is-- it's all about recency and news. And so when you're trying to get your message out, if you have timely, relevant, interesting news Twitter is going to be a fantastic platform as they start to test some of these products.
But as we've seen with Facebook, as you said Adam, there's going to be a lot of flops. And there's going to be a lot of people who will say it doesn't work. But then there'll be something that'll come along and people it's like, why didn't anyone ever think of this? This is a great use of Twitter. And Facebook, recently, has had a tremendous amount of success with re-targeting.
My guess is that we're going to see the same process at Twitter with the Twitter IPO. A lot of failures, but then some really great aha moments that marketers incorporate into their marketing playbook and marketing just continues to-- I guess it's another great way to reach people when we want to reach them.
So there's many reasons to be excited about the Twitter IPO. I agree with you, there are some headwinds for Twitter. You sent me a New York Times article not too long ago, Chad, that estimated that up to 70% of Twitter traffic was actually not of human origin given the widespread adoption of the Twitter API.
And they've been very open about that. That is a problem. Of course they don't follow all their links, so there's been no SEO or Google consequence to that. But it does make you wonder just how successful will some of these advertising campaigns be?
But I think overall, in my opinion, the Twitter IPO is maybe a little more exciting than the Facebook IPO for the small businesses we work with, just for the reason you said. Because it's tied more to news and current events and trending events, and less to your friends and who you know. And we shall see.