This Week On Twitter: Social Media User Demographics, Twitter’s 7th Birthday, Fake Tweets Alert

Need a little weekend reading? We’ve compiled our top ten Twitter stories of the week, which includes the latest social media user demographics for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, a celebration of Twitter’s seventh birthday, a warning that screenshots of Tweets can no longer be trusted, tips on how to rock social media in just 30 minutes per day and a look at what happens every 60 seconds on the internet. Here are our top 10 Twitter stories of the week. 1. Social Media 2013: User Demographics For Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest And Instagram [INFOGRAPHIC] Those good people at the Pew Research Centre recently updated their annual look at who is using social media, discovering that 16 percent of U.S. internet users are now active on Twitter, with the social micro-blogging network continuing to be popular with black and hispanic users, adults aged 18-29 and folks who live in urban areas. But what about some of the other major social platforms? Aside from Twitter, who exactly is using Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr? 2. Twitter Is 7 Years Old Today – Happy Birthday Twitter! This week, Twitter celebrates its 7th birthday. Yep, seven years ago, on March 21, 2006, co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the first-tweet and Twitter was born. 3. Alert! Screenshots Of Tweets Can No Longer Be Trusted It’s never been a better time to be a jerk on Twitter. Why? Because you could tweet something horrendous, quickly delete it and claim whatever screenshots were taken were fake. Yes, fake. There’s a site that’s letting people make fake tweets for ANY Twitter handle and the result looks entirely real. And this is not a joke. 4. How To Rock Social Media In Just 30 Minutes A Day [INFOGRAPHIC] Social media comes with a pretty steep learning curve and, certainly for brands and marketers, if you’re not careful it can quickly consume an enormous amount of your time. And while excelling on these platforms does take work, if maintaining your presence on Twitter and Facebook is eating into your productivity everywhere else then you’re never going to get the results that you’re anticipating. That’s a sliding scale that can quickly lead to frustration, apathy and burnout – before you know what’s happened, you’ll be asking yourself: is social media all hype? 5. What Happens Every Minute On The Internet? [INFOGRAPHIC] The internet: it’s kind of a big deal. It’s where stuff happens. Lots of stuff. Too much to count, in fact. Even when you break it right down – like, for example, looking at what happens online each and every minute of the day – the numbers are staggering. 6. The 5 Types Of Social Media Complainers (And How To Deal With Them) [INFOGRAPHIC] Social media has revolutionised customer support for many brands around the world, providing a cost-effective, efficient and proactive tool to manage enquiries, support issues and complaints. Indeed, as your presence on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook grows, so too will the number of negative comments you receive. Your team will need to identify and separate legitimate complainers from “chancers”, reassure your best customers that their problem will be resolved, stay calm and professional and remember that, at all times, social media is an entirely public medium. 7. You Are What You Tweet: The Science Behind Twitter “Tribes” [STUDY] In a new study published in EPJ Data Science, scientists from Royal Holloway University in collaboration with Princeton University delved inside the formation of tribe-like communities on Twitter. The team found that language is an extremely reliable indicator of what communities users belong to, and vice versa – language used in tweets is an accurate indicator of what users might belong to that Twitter community. Let’s take a closer look. 8. Good News Travels Faster Than Bad On Social Networks [RESEARCH] Good news travels fast. Especially on social networks. So says Jonah Berger, a social psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of new book (and recent SXSW talk), Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Berger and his Penn colleague Katherine Milkman dove into people’s social networking habits, analyzing the types of content people share most, with whom, when, and why. The results are pretty fascinating. 9. 5 Essential Elements Of A Great Twitter Content Strategy What’s your Twitter strategy? If you tried answering this question with “Ummm, we tweet a lot, and we use hashtags,” that’s not good enough. To be successful on Twitter – whether you’re tweeting on behalf of a Fortune 500, the small mom-and-pop down the streed or your own personal brand – you need a well-articulated content strategy that covers the who, what, when, why and how. 10. A Twitter Spring Cleaning Checklist Today, Wednesday, March 20, is the first official day of spring. And with the sun finally peeping out, and flower buds starting to bloom, it’s time to break out the vacuums and feather dusters for a little spring cleaning. Have you ever considered applying those principles – using the start of a sunny new season as an opportunity to clean out and spruce up – to your Twitter account? Here are a few suggestions for some Twitter spring cleaning. Did you know we have a newsletter? Sign-up to receive a daily digest of all things Twitter, sent straight to your inbox. Click here to sign up for the AllTwitter Newsletter. (Twitter image via Shutterstock.)

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This Week On Twitter: Social Media User Demographics, Twitter’s 7th Birthday, Fake Tweets Alert

Shea Bennett

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