Originally posted at freshchat.com.au
Following on from my last post about the explosion of interest in Twitter this year, I was interested to find out a bit more about who is instigating these conversations. I ran a couple of queries with our online monitoring tool Social Radar.
A survey of over 600 Australian blogs reveals that interest in Twitter has increased steadily over the past six months, but there is not the exponential increase one would expect to be generating the increased search volumes reported by the likes of Compete.
In contrast, a survey of over 100 Australian traditional media publications (online) reveals an exponential increase in mentions of Twitter in the past three months, with other key social media sites Facebook and MySpace warranting little mention.
This confirms my suspicions that early adopters, such as those who blog, have been engaging in Twitter for some time and are not creating the current online buzz. The chatter being generated online is by those in the traditional media with the general public as their key audience. So what is it about Twitter that has garnered this attention in recent months? I suspected it was something inane such as Ashton Kutcher or Britney Spears tweeting forays, but no, apparently the key topics of conversation in relation to Twitter included the Fake Stephen Conroy and the Victorian Bushfires.
