▶ Twitter is Not the Voice of The People: In its rise to socialmedia dominance, Twitter is scanned by media reps and brands alike to find out “what they’re saying” out in the Twitterverse. But there’s a problem with that. Pew Research Center found that opinions on Twitter are often at odds with the general public’s. The differences? Sometimes Twitter is more liberal. Other times it’s more conservative. For its research, Pew focused on political events in 2012. Here’s a sampling of the findings:
• When President Obama won re-election, polls suggested 52% of the public was pleased and 45% unhappy. On Twitter, 77% of tweets about his win were positive and 23% negative.
• Similarly, only 20% of the public told pollsters they thought Obama did a better job than Romney in their first debate (the one in which Obama was criticized for being unfocused). But 59% of tweets favored him. Pew said that Twitter users are considerably younger than the general public and tend to lean Democratic.
• Opinions about Sen. John Kerry being nominated as Obama’s secretary of state split the general public: 39% approved, 36% disapproved and 26% had no opinion. On Twitter, just 6% expressed support, while 32% were negative, and a clear majority, 62%, expressed no opinion.
The reason for the swing, Pew said, is that on Twitter, unlike in opinion polls, users decide what they think is important enough to mention publicly.
Source: Pew Research Center
▶ Spending Time Online: According to comScore, Americans spend most of their time online on Facebook, 11% in December 2012. Based on comScore’s report, 24/7 Wall St. identified the top 10 Web properties where people spend the most time.
1. Facebook.com: 10.8% of time online, 150.3 million desktop visitors, 97.7 million mobile visitors.
2. Google: 10% of time online, 193.8 million desktop visitors, 113.7 million mobile visitors
3. Yahoo: 7% of time online, 186 million desktop visitors, 92 million mobile visitors.
4. Microsoft: 4.9% of time online, 171 million desktop visitors, 55 million mobile visitors.
5. AOL: 2.5% of time online, 118 million desktop visitors, 62 million mobile visitors.
6. Amazon: 1% of time online, 128 million desktop visitors, 80.5 million mobile visitors.
7. eBay: 0.9% of time online, 77.7 million desktop visitors, 39.5 million mobile visitors.
8. Tumblr: 0.7% of time online.
9. Craigslist: 0.7% of time online, 60 million desktop visitors.
10. ESPN: 0.6% of time spent online, 38.7 million desktop visitors and 34.6 million mobile visitors.
Source: comScore-24/7 Wall St.
Source: Simply Measured
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