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Backlink: http://www.slideshare.net/dp0907/dpatton-resume-7471607
Thursday, March 31, 2011
CHART OF THE DAY: How Many Users Does Twitter REALLY Have?
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How many people use Twitter? Many fewer than Twitter would lead you to believe.
According to its "about" page, Twitter has 175 million registered users. But "registered users" is a funny term. What it really means is the number of accounts. So, according to Twitter, 175 million Twitter accounts have been opened during Twitter's history.
That's nice to know, but it doesn't really answer our question, does it? Fleshed-out a bit, our question is: How many individuals are active users of Twitter?
Facebook has a simple answer to this question. It says 600 million people visit Facebook each month, and that half come back every day.
Twitter doesn't share this number.
Fortunately, we know someone with full access to Twitter's API. Even more fortunate, this person took it upon himself to have an engineer write up some code and actually count the real number of users on Twitter.
Well, that's sort of what he did. What he actually did was look at follower/following statistics, to see how many users are following or are followed by a certain number of people.
Using data that is now just one month old, he found out that…
- There were 119 million Twitter accounts following one or more other accounts.
- There were 85 million accounts with one ore more followers.
With these figures, and Twitter's claim of 175 million accounts, a little subtraction shows us that there are 56 million Twitter accounts following zero other accounts, and 90 million Twitter accounts with zero followers.
Those are some interesting figures, because they show us Twitter is much smaller than the "175 million!" number might lead us to believe.
But they still don't answer our question: How many active users does Twitter have?
To get close to answering that question with this data, we have to take a guess at how many accounts an "active" Twitter user follows.
At Facebook, a company source tells us, they believe that a user is not going to end up sticking around unless they make friends with 10 people.
So let's say an "active" Twitter user is someone who follows at least 10 other accounts.
How many such "active" Twitter users are there? Our source's API data shows that there are 56 million accounts on Twitter following 8 or more accounts. There are only 38 million following 16, and just 12 million following 64.
Your author, by the way, follows 1,300 people. There are only 1.5 million accounts on Twitter following 512 or more accounts.
Some context:
- Facebook has more than 600 million monthly active users.
- Foursquare has 7.5 million registered users.
- The Huffington Post reaches 30 million people each month.
Follow the Chart Of The Day on Twitter: @chartoftheday
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See Also:
- Here's What Jack Dorsey Needs To Do To Make Twitter Awesome Again
- CHART OF THE DAY: Myspace's Revenue Collapse
- Should Dennis Crowley Sell Foursquare For $1 Billion? The SAIcast Discuss
CHART OF THE DAY: How Many Users Does Twitter REALLY Have?
What NOT To Do When You're Buying A Domain Name
Navigating the world of domain names can be a daunting task if you're not up to speed on how to get one.
With countless caveats and hosting companies out there, it's easy to be overwhelmed or worse, make a mistake that could ultimately cripple your business.
Consider these do's and don'ts from small-business owners and experts to help secure your company's domain name.
Do: Include a location or keywords in your domain name, if you can.
If your business focuses on a geographic region, try to put the location into the name of your domain, says Jean Bedord, a Silicon Valley-based search consultant and author of the book I've Got a Domain Name--Now What???
When Mikalai Krivenko needed a domain for his painting business in Hoboken, N.J., in 2009, his son Yuriy, a Brooklyn-based search-optimization specialist, suggested he put "Hoboken" in the name. For $11, Krivenko bought hobokenpainter.com, which shows up at the top of keyword searches that include "Hoboken" and "painter." Whether it's location, or what your company does, Krivenko advises: "Put the most important keyword for your industry in the domain name."
Do: Register yourself as the owner of the domain name.
Some business owners make the mistake of not checking to ensure whoever registers their domain name does so under the business owner's name. It's very important to be sure you are the domain owner and administrative contact, says Bedord. "It's just like a piece of property. If you don't own the property, you can't sell an existing business," she says.
It's an obvious, yet common, mistake made by business owners. Three years after Graham Hunt, 44, started his real estate firm Valencia Property in Spain in 2000, the two-person web design team he hired to build his site split and he had to choose between them. Hunt soon discovered the partner he didn't choose had registered himself as the owner and administrative contact for the domain name, so Hunt didn't own his own website. It took three years and he ended up paying the disgruntled partner nearly $6,000 in sales commission fees to get back ownership of the domain, which originally cost just $15.
Do: Remember to renew your domain name registration.
When Nick Hoffmann, 32, missed the renewal of his networking company's domain name inetguru.com in 2000, it was a crippling business blow. The name got bought by someone else and without email access through the site, Hoffmann lost contact with clients. Eventually, he folded the company. Now working as chief operating officer for an aftermarket marketplace for domains, Hoffmann suggests buying a registration for five or 10 years upfront, or setting up an annual auto-renew payment.
Just make sure the credit card on file doesn't expire, another common mistake that might lead to losing a domain name. "The whole aftermarket industry is based on names that drop off," he says. "It happens every day."
Don't: Use dashes, abbreviations or numbers in your domain name.
Instead, come up with a catchy name that's easy to remember and captures your business. Fan Bi, co-founder of Blank Label, a Boston-based online custom dress shirt company learned that lesson when settling on a domain in 2008. At the time, blanklabel.com was out of his price range at $15,000.
Bi chose blank-label.com for a much cheaper $250. But as the business grew, he realized the hyphenated name was far from the best choice. "You get much more word-of-mouth if it's a name you can easily say without having to spell out," Bi says. Last year, after months of negotiation with the domain owner, he was able to purchase blanklabel.com for $6,000. Just three months after the change, website traffic shot up 25%.
Don't: Waste money on extensions other than .com.
When you register your domain name, you'll be bombarded with offers to purchase other versions like .net and .co. For most small businesses, that's not needed. Investing in other extensions becomes important when patenting something or protecting a trademark, says Bedord. If you think a competitor might want the .net version of your domain name, for example, consider taking it first. "The reality is you have to pay for every one of those," Bedord says. "The value is really in the .com."
Don't: Buy a domain without checking into its past.
Even available domains can be exposed to legal trouble if the name is too similar to another company's trademark. Nearly a year after launching New York-based LEEDTeacher in 2009, Zachary Rose learned the domain LEEDTeacher.com infringed on the registered trademark of a massive nonprofit.
Rose, now 29, received a cease-and-desist letter demanding he change the name of his green jobs training firm, and shut down the website. He ultimately paid $2,000 in lawyer fees, renamed the company Green Education Services and switched the domain to GreenEDU.com.
Aside from consulting a lawyer, check www.whois.net, which lists registered domain names, for other possible legal landmines, suggests Rose. The site also includes expired domains up for grabs, and you can learn what problems a name comes with. For example, if a previous domain owner violated a Google term and was banned from Google searches, you'll want to know before investing in the name, Rose says.
This post originally appeared at Entrepreneur.
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- Three Cool, Creative Ways Businesses Use iPads
- Join Us At Make Mine A Million (M3 1000) In Denver
- Small Business News: Social Media School
What NOT To Do When You're Buying A Domain Name
Opening Day Surprise: A Free Month Of Baseball Streaming On Your iPad And iPhone (AAPL, GOOG)
It's Major League Baseball's opening day, and the league is launching a bunch of cool updates to its excellent mobile apps.
The most exciting is a free month of live, out-of-market streaming game telecasts on the iPad and iPhone, sponsored by Volvo. This is basically a free trial of the MLB.TV service that provides these live game streams year-round.
There's also a new "Gameday" design -- the virtual play-by-play graphics if you aren't watching a live telecast -- which uses screenshots from an MLB baseball game for the Playstation.
And this is the first year MLB will be streaming live video to some Android phones, using Flash.
Here's the current list of Android phones that MLB will offer live streaming for:
Sprint HTC Evo, Verizon HTC Droid Incredible, Verizon Motorola Droid X, Verizon Motorola Droid, Verizon Motorola Droid 2, Verizon Motorola Droid Pro, Verizon HTC Thunderbolt, VZW Samsung Galaxy Tab, HTC Nexus One, T-Mobile Samsung Nexus S, T-Mobile HTC Glacier (myTouch 4G). Minimum OS 2.2 and Installed Flash
Here's MLB's full list of Opening Day updates:
At Bat 11 for iPad
· Watch every out-of-market game during April with a free MLB.TV trial presented by Volvo (NEW)
· Enhanced, re-designed Gameday pitch-by-pitch features, including realistic ballpark renderings from all 30 MLB parks in partnership with MLB® 11: The Show™, available exclusively on PlayStation® (NEW)
· See key plays and pivotal moments from every game with Live Looks-Ins, blackout free (NEW)
· Archived games to watch every game from 2011 on-demand (NEW)
· MLB.TV subscription access to watch live out-of-market games all season
· Home and away radio broadcasts
· In-progress video highlights
· Condensed Games
· Breaking news, standings, schedules, rosters and statistics
At Bat 11 for iPhone, iPod touch
· Watch every out-of-market game during April with a free MLB.TV trial presented by Volvo (NEW)
· See key plays and pivotal moments from every game with Live Looks-Ins, blackout free (NEW)
· Archived games to watch every game from 2011 on-demand (NEW)
· At The Ballpark with check-in, interactive venue maps, expanded video highlights, my profile, social media with Twitter and Facebook, exclusive offers and rewards and more (NEW)
· Customizable home screen to feature a designated favorite team (NEW)
· MLB.TV subscription access to watch live out-of-market games all season
· Home and away radio broadcasts
· In-progress video highlights
· Condensed Games and video library archive, searchable by team and player
· Breaking news, standings, schedules, rosters and statistics
· Customizable push notifications for game start and end and video highlight availability
At Bat 11 for Android
· MLB.TV subscription access to watch live out-of-market games (NEW)*
· At Bat.tv Free Game of the Day to watch one live out-of-market game free every day (NEW)*
· See key plays/pivotal moments from every game with Live Look-Ins, blackout free (NEW)*
· At The Ballpark with check-in, expanded video highlights, my profile, social media with Facebook, exclusive offers and rewards and more (NEW)
· Customizable home screen to feature a designated favorite team (NEW)
· Favorite team icon launcher widget for one-click access to a team’s homepage (NEW)
· MLB.com widget for one-click access to a live league-wide scoreboard (NEW)
· In-progress video highlights
· Home and away radio broadcasts
· Gameday pitch-by-pitch tracker
· Video library archive, searchable by team and player
· Breaking news, standings, schedules, rosters and statistics
* Technical requirements for live video on Android: To access live video, the minimum OS is 2.2, supporting Flash with at least an ARMv7 processor. Note that not all 2.2 devices support Flash and users may experience other unexpected device constraints.
At Bat 11 for BlackBerry
· Home and away radio broadcasts
· In-progress video highlights
· Gameday pitch-by-pitch tracker
· Customizable push notifications for game start and end and video highlight availability
· Breaking news, standings, schedules, rosters and statistics
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- Apple's iPhone 5 Delay Just Opened The Door For Google And Microsoft
- Wall Street Starts Cutting Apple Estimates Due To iPhone 5 "Delay"
- Check Out This Amazing Video Meeting App For iPad
Opening Day Surprise: A Free Month Of Baseball Streaming On Your iPad And iPhone (AAPL, GOOG)
How To Make Your Blogger Look More Like Tumblr
Google is giving its Blogger platform a huge visual overhaul. Here's how to see the new changes for yourself:
All you need to do is add "/view" to the end of your blog's url to enable the new views which include Mosaic, Flipcard, Sidebar, Snapshot, and Timeslide.
We have a feeling that these appealing new blog views are in direct response to the growing popularity of visually stimulating blog platforms like Tumblr that make it easy to make your blog look fresh.
Here's a Blog as it currently exists at http://bearonabouttown.blogspot.com/:
But if you simply add "/view" to the end of the blog's URL, you can test out Google's new Blogger views.
By typing in http://bearonabouttown.blogspot.com/view you will see this:
The current default view is "Sidebar," but click the blue button to try other views like "Flipcard":
One more cool view that directly imitates Tumblr is the "Mosaic" view:
Try them out for yourself to get a taste of what Google's bringing next to Blogger, one of the most visited websites in the world.
According to Mashable, Google will make these views much more customizable over the next few months, and the views remain optional for now. These "dynamic" views should give Blogger a boost in the war with other blogging platforms.
Don't Miss: 10 Tips And Tricks For Google Voice
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- Get Android 2.3 Gingerbread On Your Droid X Or Droid 2 Early
- How To Turn On Google +1 Now
- Now You Can Jailbreak The Latest iPhone Update
How To Make Your Blogger Look More Like Tumblr
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