The State of the Twittersphere : 2010

For those ‘watching’ the amazing growth and use of Twitter here are some really interesting facts.

• Twitter growth peaked at 13.5% in March 2009 and dropped to 3.5% in October 2009
• The average user is following more people; about 160 up from about 40, 6 months ago
• The average user has more followers too. About 300, up from 60, 6 months ago
• 82% of Twitter users maintain a network of less than 100 followers
• 91% of Twitter users follow less than 100 people
• Thursday and Friday are the most active days for Twitter
• 10pm – 11 pm is the busiest time in the day
• And…leave space at the end of your tweet for someone to add a user name and maybe a comment, to increase chance of RT.

Many many more bits of data on Twitter right here.

The data is the data

One of the most popular retail data stories is…

when analysing the sales data the retailer found that there was a strong correlation between the sales of diapers and sales of beer. After being puzzled by it for a while, shop observation revealed that most purchasers of diapers were fathers on the way home from work. And they ended up picking up a 6 pack of beer as well. Hence the correlation.

That is great news right? You know that chances are when someone comes in to buy diapers, they are likely to buy beer too.

Now comes the decision point.

Do you keep diapers next to the beer? Which is what the retailer mentioned above, apparently did.

Or do you separate the two by some distance, knowing that the father will anyway go to pick up beer, if you separate the two then maybe he will pick up some other stuff as well. Like say Chips, salsa etc.

What would you do?