Demystifying Twitter (Part I): One way, One to Many Publishing Service

Twitter has attracted tremendous attention from the media and celebrities, but there is much uncertainty about Twitter's purpose. Is Twitter a communications service for friends and groups, a means of expressing yourself freely, or simply a marketing tool?

Here's sampling two independent studies on the Twittersphere (The Twitter eco-system):

1. A study on the user demographics and usage phenomenon by Harvard Business Publishing (Sampling about 3 lakh Twitter users)
2. Another study by Hubspot on activity levels of Twitter Users. (Sampling about 4.5 million users)

User Demographics and usage styles
Compared against other online social networks; 80% Twitter users have atleast 1 follower/following. This is in contrast to the online social portals, which register 60 - 65% single friend status. The other marked departure from social networking standards is the following/follower pattern. Most of the online social networks activity is focusssed around women, where as in Twitter, the activity is centred on men.

It might point to the fact that content produced by Men on twitter is perceived to be more compelling than a typical social network and content produced by women is less compelling (because of lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies etc)

The Twitter usage pattern is also very different from a typical on line social network and a Twitter user contributes very rarely --> The median lifetime tweets per user is one which translates to over half the twitter users retweeting less than once every 74 days.
At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue - Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia's edits ii. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.

Contd...

Microsoft Morro on the Horizon

Microsoft Corp in a quest to provide complete security to its OS users would soon be launching its own antivirus app Code named-‘Morro’ at the end of 2009.
This news assumes significance as this antivirus would be completely free and would provide higher level of security due to close knit approach with Windows OS.Microsoft may be able to provide a great solution due to control over anonymous usage statistics of millions of PC’s.
This has sound alarms for commercial Anti-virus companies like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, earning majority of their revenues by protecting Windows PCs all these years. These companies also have significant presence in enterprise security market and attract huge revenues from it.
Today many users are forced to buy paid anti-virus to fight higher level of threats unleashed by malicious programmes and viruses. The availability of anti-virus app by Microsoft itself would avoid the security dilemma faced by OS users and may also increase its legal OS sales in emerging markets.
Microsoft through this initiative is trying to ramp up confidence amongst its customers, at the same time opening up a new revenue stream in future. The move may be late timed but indeed serve great purpose for users craving about better anti-virus integration in windows OS.

Indian Telecom Story (Part X): Gartner's predictions about the Indian Telecom Industry

Gartner has made public, its future growth prediction for the Indian Telecoms market. Here's presenting a few highlights of the same:

1.The Telecom sector revenues would touch $30 billion by 2013 registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.5 percent between 2009-2013. In other words the Indian Telecom industry with its low double digit growth numbers is now maturing as any other industry would.

2.The Telecom subscriber base is also expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.5 percent and would cross 770 million by 2013. This is somewhat in disagreement with DoT's figures of 900 million by 2013/ and 1.1 billion by 2015. http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/05/dot-in-first-ever-forecast-of-mobile.html

3.Mobile market penetration is projected to increase to 63.5 percent in 2013 from 38.7 percent in 2009. The main resons for this would be increased focus on the rural market, entry of consumer durable and electronic companies into the mobile handset segment, and cheaper handsets.

4.The churn rate - the rate at which a subscriber switches their operator - would cross 59 percent in 2013 from 53 percent currently. The churn rate is also not expected to shoot to a high level despite introduction of Number portability.

5.The number of people with prepaid connections,accounting for 93 percent of the subscriber base in 2008, will continue to swell to exceed 96 percent by 2013, surpassing 740 million. The postpaid to prepaid ratio will not see major up move as it is forecasted to exceed 29 million by 2013 just a small CAGR growth of 2.5 percent from 23 million in 2008.This could be a big dampener as it reflect the inability of Telco’s to garner post-paid users.

6.The revenues from data services will significantly contribute to mobile services in India, with a CAGR of 16.8% from 2009 to 2013. Growth will be triggered by increased adoption of value-added services, which are relevant to both rural and urban markets.The introduction of 3G in future could well land a helping hand in increasing Telecom sector’s revenues.