So recently I had the brilliant idea to put together a bit of a survey and see how others used Twitter. Well, I did it. I did have to do some twitter whoring to get the 100 responses, but it did work.

I kept it short and sweet and only had 10 questions. Why did I pick 10 questions? Good question.

1. People like Top 10 lists
2. Im lazy and only thought of 10 questions
3. The free software I used limited me to 10
4. People are lazy, the more questions the more garbage answers Id get

And about my being lazy - as soon as I posted the survey I thought of 3 great questions to ask. Next time I guess, but for now - on to the results.

My Thoughts on the Twitter Survey

Prior to digging in, I want to send out a thanks to all that took the survey, promoted it, retweeted it, or helped me get the 100 responses. Thank you all.

The survey consists of 10 questions, 9 of which were a form of multiple choice and 1 that was open text. Except for 2 questions, there are 100 answers (it seems I forgot some settings in the beginning) for each question.

Overall the results were not what I would call “shocking” but there was some interesting trends that I saw. The responses were mostly from the US to the tune of 80%. Europe had 12% with Western Europe being 10% of that total. Where is the rest of the world? Not reading my ramblings on Twitter is my guess.

The next question showed that 78% of us (yes I answered my own survey) update our Facebook status where only 16% update Myspace. I didnt ask age, but Im guessing that the average age of the responses is late 20’s to early 30’s and puts us out of the “typical myspace user” range. I admit, I update both. I was surprised to see that 45% of you use FriendFeed, really, that many? Guess Im a late adopter on that one. I do feel bad for leaving off Linkedin as a good number of you wrote that in - sorry!

I think I set the bar a bit high on the usage, as 85% dont tweet more than 25 times a day. I guess either many of you lied or I just think you tweet more than you really do.

Now, the real question I was curious about. What do you use? The Web and Twirl were the winners with Twitterfox and Twitpic leading the losers. Twitterberry got quite the number of write in votes - again, sorry there. The follow up question really cleared most applications out of the running. It was a simple 1. Web 2. Twirl 3. Twitterfox for what’s the preferred method to tweet.

The Blackberry vs iphone questions were just for fun but ended up being interesting. It seems that 50% of those that answered use and tweet with one of the products. I really wouldnt have guessed it to be that high (I do understand that the group I asked is quite a gadget happy bunch).

The next 2 questions were a bit vague, but I think everyone got the idea. The one surprise was that #3 for “What do you get the most out of with your use of Twitter?” was Industry news. I personally use Twitter as my RSS Reader but with 175 filters, I just wasnt sure how many others did the same. I can only imagine who typed this answer in, but Ill let you follow the link and find out for yourself: Top 10 Twitter Uses.

One of the best uses of Twitter or at least the funniest out of the group was this one: “OCD outlet”. Note: The same person answered #8 and #9 with OCD.

The last question gave shout outs to alot of people and web sites/companies/events. Here is a short list of each (in no order):

Sites

• Sphinn.com
• DownloadSquad
• Mashable.com
• SXSW
• SMX
• readwriteweb.com
• Zappos
• Edubloggers
• TechCrunch

People

• Chris Winfield
• Robert Scoble
• Tamar Weinberg
• Dazzlin Donna or Liana Evans (they werent sure)
• Andy Beal
• @cheapsuits
• @sugarrae
• @graywolf
• @leeodden
• Jesus said so (hey, someone put this in as an answer)

The list of people that inspired (names dropped that I didnt fit on here) might not even be as long as the list of unnamed people. Talk about a word of mouth marketing.

Lessons Learned

I didnt learn anything ground breaking but the data is quite interesting (to me at least). I did learn that SurveyMonkey WILL NOT be my choice in the future for a free quick survey and that I will test the output options prior to running a survey. I think I have said enough, go take a look at the results yourself:

Raw Survey Results

1. Where are you located?

2.Do you also use (on a somewhat regular basis)?

3.How many times do you tweet a day?

4. What way(s) do use Twitter?

5. What way do you use Twitter the most?

6. Do you use a Blackberry with Twitter?

7. Do you use an iphone with Twitter?

8. Why do you use Twitter?

9. What do you get the most out of with your use of Twitter?

10. Last Question: What or who got you to start using Twitter?

Related Ramblings

• Web 2.0 Sucks
• Twitter Link Find V15
• 12 Ways Social Networks are like High School
• Jaiku Gets an Upgrade, Somewhat
• Kwippy Guide

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Analytics, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.