Does Twitter Nation Have a Heart?

This morning I would like to share  a few Twitter facts from Ben Lorica | @dliman.  Please keep in mind these numbers are now 8 months old....but it will give you  a pretty good idea:

1. # of registered users: 105,779,710 (1,500% growth over the last three years.)

2. # of new sign-ups per day: ~ 300,000 (More recently, 60% of new accounts were from outside the U.S.)

3. # of new tweets per day: 55 million

4. # of unique daily visitors to the site twitter.com: ~ 180 million. (That's actually dwarfed by the traffic that flows through twitter's API -- 75% of traffic is through the API.)

5. # of API requests per day: 3 billion

6. # of registered apps: 100,000 (from 50,000 in Dec/2009)

7. # of search queries per day: 600 million

8. Twitter's instance, of their recently open-sourced graph database (FlockDB), has 300 13 billion edges and handles 100,000 reads per second.

9. # of servers1: "... in the hundreds"

10. Blackberry's just released twitter app accounted for 7% of new sign-ups over the last few days

11. A NY Times story gets tweeted every 4 seconds.

In a sense, Twitter is larger than most nations in the the world.  What could be accoplished if we all learned to work together for the  benefit of others?   Let me give you an example:   In the above situation, let's say half of those numbers were from Bots.  That still leaves approximately 52,500,000.   If each of these people would contribute $1 to help their fellow man.....$52,500,000.  Now pause for a sec and  consider this; what if Twitter became the Social Media with a heart and all these people gave $1 each month to help others.  You are now looking at a total of $630,000,000 / yr.....that is the potential of Twitter!  

Although I enjoy Twitter very much, I challenge you with these thoughts.  Twitter is a fantastic social media...but imagine what could be accomplished if the Tweeters ever started working together.

I don't have time to Tweet!

I  have heard that comment many times and I certainly understand!  You may work at a job, take care of kids, cook, clean, do yard work,  attend church activities, and much more!  With a schedule like that...where are you supposed to find time to do Twitter?  Sometimes in life, we all need an assistant.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a nanny for the kids, a gardener for the lawn and a chef for the meals?  These people would do some of your everyday chores, giving you more time to spend as you wish.  Unfortunately, most of us cannot afford that many personal assistants, but you can get one to help with your Twittering activities.  Yes, I know, you enjoy Twitter.   Well you might enjoy  gardening or cooking too...but wouldn't it be nice to have some help...with the freedom to still do what you enjoy?

There are many different types of Twitter software on the market, but I have found Tweet Adder to be the best Twitter software.  Determining which is best for you depends on your needs.   It is nice to be able to write a weeks worth of informational tweets and schedule them at a certain time interval.   I strongly suggest using personal tweets and replies mixed in with this.....show that you are a real person.     

Another way to provide useful information to your Twitter followers is through an RSS feed.   Let's say you are selling widgets to the manufacturing industry...and have carefully built a a targeted following.  In that case you might want to have a manufacturing RSS feed posted to your twitter account 2-5 times a day.  This Twitter software will manage your RSS feeds...all you have to do is a little research on Google.  In this case I would search for "rss manufacturing feed".  When I found one that I liked, I would simply copy that address to the rss section of the twitter software.  Now your assistant is providing educational information for your targeted followers on a timely basis.

Do I believe in a total robot driven account...absolutely not!   As I mentioned earlier...use some aspects of the software to help you save time...while still interacting and enjoying other areas.  We use assistants all the time in our everyday lives:  a microwave is an assistant that takes less time than an oven, a dishwasher saves time doing dishes, a clothes dryer saves time over using a clothesline.  If you use these assistants, why not use another that will help you and your business get the targeted followers?