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Health & Fitness

33 Million Tweets Per Hour

The headlines read: "Denver Broncos QB pulls off an unexpected win and sets a new record on Twitter at the same time with 9,420 tweets per second."

Once again, I feel like I need to get . For those of you who follow my blog, sorry to be MIA the last few days. By the way, wasn't it supposed to be warm today? Gotta love Ohio!

Since I write a blog on social media, I cannot pass up the chance to share with you the record that was broken on Twitter this weekend. Expecially since I am a huge football fan. The headline all over the Internet read "Denver Broncos QB pulls off an unexpected win and sets a new record on Twitter at the same time." Make sure you are sitting down when you read this next part. According to Twitter, Tebow's overtime heroics set a new record for sports of 9,420 tweets per second. Love him or hate him, Tebow continues to be a force to be reckoned with on the field and in the online world.

9,420 tweets per second. That's 565,200 tweets per minute and 33,912,000 tweets per hour. Yeah, that number is 33 million. In setting a new record, Tebow eclipsed the mark of 7,196 tweets per second (TPS) set at end of the 2011 during the FIFA Women's World Cup, where the U.S. team lost to Japan in a penalty kick shootout. What is the overall tweeting record, you ask? 25,088 (again tweets per second) set on Dec. 9, 2010, when Japanese TV aired Hayoa Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky." 

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Tebow's Twitter showing also bested some momentous non-sporting events, such as the Royal Wedding (3,966 TPS) (5,106 TPS) and Steve Jobs' resignation from Apple (6,049 TPS), and another popular subject: Beyonce's pregnancy at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (8,868 TPS).

It's really difficult to wrap your head around that, isn't it? Especially for a social networking company that has only been around for six years!

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Let's go back to basics for a moment. What is Twitter and what are tweets? Twitter is a very popular instant messaging system that lets a person send brief text messages up to 140 characters in length to a list of followers. Launched in 2006, Twitter was designed as a social network to keep friends and colleagues informed throughout the day. However, it became widely used for commercial and political purposes to keep customers, voters and fans up-to-date as well as to encourage feedback. Twitter has grown to more than 300 million users as of 2011, generating more than 300 million tweets and handling more than 1.6 billion search queries per day. It has been described as "the SMS of the Internet."

After establishing a Twitter account at www.twitter.com, individuals can import their e-mail addresses as well as use the Twitter search to locate and invite people. Twitter messages ("tweets") can be made public and sent to anyone requesting the feed, or they can be sent only to approved followers.

Messages can be sent and received via cellphone text messaging (SMS), the Twitter website or a third-party Twitter application. To follow a Twitter feed, the Twitter site and feed name become the URL; for example, Microsoft's Twitter feed is www.twitter.com/microsoft.

Social media gurus will tell you that Twitter works so well because it is instant communication. Our world and our society have become addicted to the "instant" status of everything around us. There are more than 283 million cellphones in the United States, according to Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Twitter is said to be on more than 200 million of those phones. More than 95 percent of these cellphones are capable of sending and receiving text messages. People always have their cellphones with them. In fact, according to a recent survey, consumers would rather leave their wallet at home than forget their cell phones. This makes the cellphone a natural option for companies to reach patrons anywhere and anytime.

Let's say, for example, you have a new restaurant. What is the value to you, as a business owner, to be able to reach your customers and potential customers instantly and share with them the following:

  • Announce your new menu or drink specials of the day to your followers
  • Promote a happy hour event or special restaurant event
  • Start a promotion and allow people to sample your food and, in turn, invite their friends to your restaurant
  • Ask for ideas for new menu items or specials of the day from your followers
  • Offer a special prize for people who follow you on Twitter by a specific time and date, to be entered to win something free like a free bottle of wine or gift certificate
  • Tell your customers that their favorite server, Danielle, is working tonight and waiting to give them excellent service? 

That value is priceless! In fact, there is a new restaurant coming to Canton in February, TD's Tailgate Grill. The owner, Scott, has decided to take a personal approach to connecting with the consumers in Stark and Summit counties and Twitter is one of the ways he is going to do that. Twitter followers will be able to see how the restaurant is being built, current construction and the progress on a daily basis. He will be sharing the history of owners and why they are opening this new restaurant in Canton, Ohio. He will communicate what is important to him as the restaurant owner and what his goals are for his restaurant. Additionally, followers will know where the food is coming from, recipes, specials, waitresses, bartenders and more. If you are a consumer, how great is that? Wouldn't that make you want to dine at this restaurant? I know that I would definitely be interested in following that! (By the way, keep watching my blog for updates on TD's Tailgate Grill!)

To summarize, can you imagine starting a business and having your customer base grow to 300 million in six years? Well, that is exactly what Twitter has done. This is proof of the power of social media. If you didn't understand how huge it was before, perhaps you are starting to "get it?"

 

 

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