Happy Birthday, Twitter!

The micro-blogging website Twitter, turned seven on Thursday.

Twitter is a popular form of communication for athletes, artists and musicians, politicians…and almost anyone else.

Twitter has replaced the town square, the white picket fence, and the coffee clatch… all in 140 characters or less. From a presidential debate to a revolution, from the Grammys to a hurricane making land, Twitter puts the power of communication in the hands of everyone.

Twitter opens up the world of interesting and thought-provoking content.  You can follow scholars, journalists, opinion makers and musicians…and it is open 24 hours a day!

It took me a while to get into twitter, however, now I think twitter is an important connection to people throughout the world and I enjoy reading, tweeting and re-tweeting.

The following are a few fun facts about twitter from Marie Claire.co.uk:

1) Most retweeted tweet ever: Barack Obama’s message on the night he won his second Presidential election is, so far, the most retweeted tweet of all time. He wrote: ‘Four more years,’ and posted it along with a picture of himself hugging first lady Michelle Obama. It was retweeted over 810,000 times.

2) Twitter is worth how much? Initially called Twttr and set up by Jack Dorsey in March 2006, the micro-blogging site predicts an ad revenue $540 million by 2014. Yikes.

3) Most followed person in Twitter: This honour goes to trousers-round-his-bum teeny bopper Justin Bieber. The singer’s Beliebers have earnt him, at this moment in time, 36,305,545 followers. His most interesting musing of late? @justinbieber ‘I wanna do a concert in space.’ Lady Gaga follows Bieber in second place with 35,261,238 followers.

4) It’s still growing: 11 Twitter accounts are created every second and one million Twitter accounts are opened every day.

5) Deepest tweet: On a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, in a self-designed submarine, director James Cameron became the first person to send a tweet from 35,755 feet under the sea. He wrote: ‘Just arrived at the ocean’s deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can’t wait to share what I’m seeing w/you.

6) Biggest trending topic ever: On February 3, 2013, Twitter announced that a record 24.1 million tweets were sent the night of Super Bowl XLVII. That’ll be the power of Beyonce.

7) Our favourite hashtag cock-up: When trying to promote Susan Boyle’s latest album, her record label invited her fans to get the hashtag #susanalbumparty trending. It trended, but for all the wrong reasons.

Marieclaire 

As many of you know, I am a big fan of re-tweeting Clay Aiken’s tweets.  I am always surprised when he tweets something fun and exciting and he only receives 50 re-tweets.  So, I decided to do a bit of research…is it just me, or are re-tweets important?

The following are a few of the many quotes I found about re-tweeting

From govloop:

The Twitter retweet is one of the most important ways to achieve value on Twitter

From Crowd Connections:

Re-tweets are social media marketing gold dust, so it is important to understand what they are and how you can get more of them…

Getting a re-tweet immediately puts your tweet and potentially a link to your website, in front of a lot more people. In short, getting re-tweets, supercharges your online profile building. So for marketing your business they are really powerful.
So getting more of them is a good thing!

From E-sales Data:

Re-tweets as they are known in the trade, are so important to your business and making connections with others. It’s a way of growing your followers quickly and expanding your contacts. It is even more powerful than a standard tweet because it suggests the post has resonated enough with someone to encourage them to share it with their followers.

From: Socialable – Be Heard Above The Noise

• Getting your content “retweeted” on Twitter (i.e. getting people to repeat what you’ve said, usually combined with a link) is a powerful way to drive traffic to your site. This can translate into increased number of subscribers.
• It increases your visibility and reach in the online community, including your rankings in search engines.
• It enables you to connect and build relationships with new people (i.e. potential customers, people of influence), especially those in your niche.
• If other people retweet you they are giving credit to your valuable content, which heightens your own credibility.

So…I bet you haven’t read every word, but I do encourage you to get used to re-tweeting Clay Aiken.  If you like to reply, great, but be sure and re-tweet too.  It is such an easy way to support Clay and help his rankings climb.

And while you are at it, CANN sends out a tweet each morning to announce the new blog.  If you enjoy the blog, we would LOVE the re-tweet.  Also, I hope you follow us on twitter.  Your support is important!

So…how about some Clay on the computer/phone.  It’s always fun to see some Clay pictures!!