23.03.2022
498

Twitter – Briefly About The Short Format Social Network

Sergej Ostrovskij
Editor in Chief at ApiX-Drive
Reading time: ~6 min

Approximately 400 million users visit Twitter every month to communicate, voice their opinions, consume content and engage in marketing.

Content:
1. What is Twitter
2. How to use the social network
3. Twitter and marketing
4. Twitter in the post-Soviet space
5. Prospects for “microblogging”

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The very first paragraph of this text consists of 140 characters - this is exactly the size limit that was relevant for a tweet until 2017. Twitter was carving out its place under the sun as a short-form streaming messaging platform. The service became the ancestor of the phenomenon of “microblogging” - the publication of regular posts in the form of small notes. Now you can express your idea twice as large - up to 280 characters are allotted for this.

What is Twitter

The Twitter project started in 2006 and was originally conceived as an internal service for Odeo. The platform was supposed to ensure communication between employees using short messages. A year later, Twitter began to conquer a wider audience. In 2021, the social network turned 15 years old, and the number of registered accounts was about 1.3 billion.

Twitter in numbers:

  • More than 500 million tweets are posted daily;
  • A text tweet is limited to 280 characters;
  • Most of all users of the social network are in the United States - about 73 million (Japan is in second place - about 56 million);
  • 80% of Twitter visitors use mobile devices to log in;
  • In the US, over 90% of tweets are generated by 10% of active accounts;
  • Nearly 40% of users fall into the 25 to 34 age group;
  • Almost 70% of social network users are men;
  • 4 main purposes of visiting the platform: reading news, entertainment, communication, interaction with the brand/company.

Twitter is a great tool for getting to know the latest news and people's opinions. The fast flow of “compact” information turned out to be in demand and allowed the social network to occupy its niche in the market. Twitter allows you to find out the news agenda in a convenient “express” format, as well as follow messages from famous politicians, musicians, athletes, etc.

How to use the social network

8 out of 10 Twitter visitors log in to the site through portable devices. The social platform has a mobile version and an application. The Twitter app has been downloaded over 1 billion times on the Google Play Store. You can also plunge into the world of “compact” content through a desktop computer.

Twitter Review | Authorization and registration on the site


The process of creating a Twitter account is extremely simple. You can use your Google account or Apple ID to sign in. Also, registration on the site can be carried out by phone number.

One of the main ideas of Twitter is access to content in quick mode. The social network interface allows you to quickly get to the right information. The main part of the space is occupied by the feed of tweets. You can find a page or an author through the search bar, in the message flow, using recommendations. To subscribe to an account, you must click the "Follow" button. After that, you join the “followers” of this author and receive all the data about their activity on the social network.

Tweet is the main information unit on the site, so the social network interface contributes to the rapid publication of content. In the mobile application, you can add a message in a few clicks using the plus button. The desktop version makes it even easier to share your thoughts. On the home page, above the publication feed, there is a special tweet form.

Twitter Review | Home page with tweet form


To create a tweet, you can use the following options:

  • write a message in a special field;
  • upload media file;
  • create a survey;
  • choose GIF or emoji.

When the “message” is ready, you need to click the “Tweet” button. For some time, the publication will be processed. You can also schedule a Tweet for a specific moment by selecting the date and time for posting.

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Twitter has enough tools to customize the flow of information. You can filter content by location, bookmark it, adjust your feed, create lists of accounts of interest, and subscribe to other users' lists.

Twitter and marketing

Any social network that has become more or less popular automatically receives the status of a promising marketing tool. Hundreds of millions of active accounts make Twitter an attractive place to promote a brand, grow a customer base, and increase loyalty to a company/product.

Twitter Review | Pages for brand promotion


More than 80% of B2B marketers use Twitter as a content marketing platform. The social network allows you to set up effective communication with followers by promoting your product, service or brand. The marketing strategy is based on high-quality content and analysis of the target audience. Tweets can spread quickly and become a catalyst for following growth. Pay special attention to the formatting of messages. It makes sense to use videos, pictures, GIFs along with text. Content in these formats is more likely to be noticed.

Twitter forms groups of users based on their interests. Such organic segmentation in the social network helps the marketer to work more efficiently. It is easier for a specialist to choose an influencer, find a target audience and plan an advertising campaign.

The Twitter Ads tool is responsible for advertising. There are three types of promotion on Twitter:

  • promoting a tweet;
  • account promotion;
  • trend (trends) promotion.

According to statistics, Twitter users interact more actively with advertising content than visitors of other popular social networks. This can be explained by the relatively small amount of advertising served with a sufficient level of nativeness.

Advertising on Twitter allows you to build a base of followers, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to a website or landing page. The main stages of setting up an advertising campaign include the following:

  • goal selection (reach, transition to the site, downloading the application, attracting readers, etc.);
  • determination of the budget (daily and general);
  • specifying the timing of the broadcast of advertising and the rate of display of ads;
  • selection of the type of bet (automatic, manual);
  • targeting by various criteria (by location, keywords, etc.);
  • creation of a customized audience (for example, based on actions in the application);
  • choice of the ad publishing place (profile, search results, home page).

Twitter in the post-Soviet space

Twitter is a popular social network with its own advantages and features. Tens of millions of people around the world actively use this platform. The largest Twitter audience is in the USA and Japan, but the post-Soviet countries are far beyond the top ten in terms of the number of active users.

Twitter is not very popular among the Russian-speaking audience, significantly inferior in popularity to Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. Among the main reasons for this situation are the following:

  • popularity of competing platforms;
  • a lot of content in English;
  • character limit;
  • orientation of users to services with visual content;
  • availability of alternative sources of highly specialized information (for example, Telegram channels).

The active Russian-speaking audience of Twitter does not number in the tens of millions of users, however, the social network has occupied and is maintaining its niche in this segment as well. Popular accounts with content in Russian can boast an impressive number of followers (hundreds of thousands and even millions). The palm is held by political and news pages, as well as profiles of popular bloggers, sports, movie and music stars.

Prospects for “microblogging”

Twitter is an interesting and original social network. However, this site occupies far from the top places in the social media rating, significantly losing in the number of active subscribers to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Nevertheless, Twitter continues to be an important channel for news content and a good springboard for promoting a company or personal brand.

Well-known politicians, cultural figures, athletes, businessmen are present on Twitter and actively use this platform to interact with their audience. This means that the microblogging platform does not lose relevance and can be quite an effective tool for the distribution and consumption of content.

***

Time is the most valuable resource for business today. Almost half of it goes to the routine. Your employees are constantly forced to perform monotonous tasks that are difficult to classify as important and specialized. You can leave everything as it is by hiring additional employees, or you can automate most of the business processes using the ApiX-Drive online connector to get rid of unnecessary time and money once and for all. The choice is yours!