The long and the short of it

Two surveys published this month by Canadian research firm Sysomos looks at countries around the world and the percentage of people online who blog and tweet.

There are some interesting metrics in each analysis  – age distribution and gender, for instance – so it’s worth reading each report if you’re interested in drilling in to the data.

One aspect intrigued me: comparing the percentage of people who write blogs – long form content – and those who only use Twitter – short-form content.

Bloggers around the world – top 15 countries:

global-blogs

Tweeters around the world – top 20 countries:

global-twitter

It’s no surprise that the USA is the top country in both examples. That’s been reflected in survey after survey over the years, eg, those “state of the blogosphere” reports Technorati does.

What’s interesting is the long tail of countries stretching out to the horizons: New Zealand at 0.47%, France 0.98%, Malaysia 1.7%, and so on.

I would imagine the trend we’ll see is the long tail of small numbers developing even more as more people get online – especially via mobile connections – and get into publishing their opinions and comments, either in long-form (blog posts like this one) or short (the 140 characters of Twitter).

So expect more and more data that you’ll need to filter in order to zero in on that which interests you. In parallel, think about ensuring content you publish yourself is effectively tagged so that it shows up in ways that match the key words and phrases that reflect how you want your content to be discovered.

The online analytics business looks like a good one to be in.

(Via Mashable)

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  11. vox-popPRcareers

    I agree, I also think the online analytics took is a good one to be in.

    However, I do think that the filtering concept will be the one to finally win out. Twitter is fabulous for businesses and people working in businesses like entrepreneurs but I don't see how it works for people on a personal level.

    Too much data can be a bad thing too.

  45. matthewdbenson

    Would be interesting to compare this list to the population by country, and understand which countries are “punching above their weight”. For example, the USA population is about (very roughly!) 5 times that of UK, but USA has approximately 4.3 times as many bloggers than UK, while USA has roughly 7.1 times as many twitterers.

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