Are Sydney radio personalities Kyle and Jackie O from 2dayfm faking twitter followers to their account KyleandJackieO after accumulating more than 30,000 users in 18 hours? Are they, in fact, Twitter Wankers?

The answer is no.

Background to the story via this Courier Mail article:

“SYDNEY radio’s Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O have been branded “Twitter wankers” by a man who makes his living selling Twitter followers to would-be marketers. {my spidey senses are tingling!}

Jackie O has slammed the claims as “absolute bullshit” but uSocial.net chief Leon Hill says the pair artificially inflated their following on the social networking site, which soared by more than 30,000 in 18 hours.”

“Almost none have photos, little to no updates and the ones that were updating were doing so with either their name, or an illegible grouping of letters.” Hill continued.

This calling out generated significant press (for Hill) and made its way onto mainstream news websites like the Courier Mail and The Age.

Um, however, what Mr Hill has missed is Kyle and Jackie O’s twitter account is now a Twitter suggested user. That’s right, Twitter recommends @KyleandJackieO to all new Twitter users. These new Twitter users are the same frightened newbies most likely to have no idea who to follow and to not have uploaded a photo and to not have posted a single update.

Also, just because some users update with “an illegible grouping of letters or their name” does not imply all or even most of their followers are fake.

That’s like saying the lack of pirates is causing global warming… Correlation != Causality:

What’s more surprising to me is that a social media ‘expert’ isn’t aware that similar cases have already been in the news. As recently as Feb 2009, popular UK news site Guardian.co.uk was accused of similar fakery-shenanigans that were debunked by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams:

“The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren’t following anyone, so we’re trying to help get them started,”

To sum it up, Kyle and Jackie O’s massive boost in recent followers is legit.

In fact, you could almost say Twitter is endorsing them by recommending them to new users - that’s a far cry from ‘faking’ it.

edit: link to twitterholic stats which shows KyleandJackieO extraordinary growth since being given Suggested User status http://twitterholic.com/kyleandjackieo/

edit 2: updated grammar for clarity.

Friday afternoon, rainy day, with beers in hand towards the end of the working week, @digdeep and I decided to engage in an old school cartoon theme battle. On Twitter.

This is how the rounds went:

digdeep 1st, lucasng 2nd

1. SuperTed vs. Denver the Last Dinosaur
2. Ulysses 31 vs. >Mysterious Cities of Gold
3. Teknoman vs. Roger Ramjet
4. Samurai Pizza Cats vs. SpeedRacer
5. C.O.P.S vs. M.A.S.K
6. Chip and Dale, Rescue Rangers vs. Defenders of the Earth
7. Legend of Zelda vs. X-Men
8. Voltron @lucasng concedes

Of course, others were welcome to join and we got suggestions from @bigboytony He-Man, @joshua_hay Thundercats, @sodsa Pinky and the Brain

Themes were arbitrarily judged by our esteemed Twitter followers on obscurity and theme catchiness.

I conceded on Voltron but of course @digdeep had to rub it in with this gem.

The TLDR summary:

• There are 679,000 Australians on Twitter.com
• Twitter.com market share has grown over 1000% since the start of the year
• Only 44% of Tweets originate from Twitter.com

Last month, I guessed that there were around 300,000 Aussie Twitter accounts.

I was wrong.

March’s results are in, and Hitwise announced Twitter.com had 1000% growth since January 2009 (market share of daily visits):

Meanwhile, Nielsen Netview reported that 679,000 Australians visited Twitter.com in March 2009.

source: Nielsen Netview, March 2009, Twitter.com unique audience

Now, what do these two reports mean?

Are there 679,000 Australians on Twitter?

The short answer is yes. The long answer, no.

Let me explain.

Methodology of Hitwise and Nielsen

Hitwise reports on the market share of daily visits to Twitter.com, compared to all other websites. It’s not reporting the number of Twitter accounts, or even the number of unique visitors to Twitter.com. This is because Hitwise data is collected from the weblogs of some, but not all Australian ISPs.

Meanwhile, Nielsen’s Netview reports on the ‘unique audience’ to Twitter.com over March. It also uses a survey panel, which is then used to represent all of Australia.

This leads to an important point: these reports only measure visits and users of Twitter.com, disregarding Twitter clients like Tweetdeck or Tweetie.

How Many Twitter Users Use A Twitter Client?

The Jan-09 client stats from tweetstats creator Damon Cortesi showed 56% of tweets do not come via the web interface:

Jan-09 Twitter Client Stats (based on +50 million tweets):

So now it should be a breeze to calculate how many Aussie Twitter users there are right? We know how many Aussies visited Twitter.com and how many tweets are posted outside of the twitter.com interface.

Nope.

What about the people who use more than one Twitter client? For example, if you tweet via twitter.com, tweetdeck and a mobile client, you’d be counted three as three users even though you are using the same username. How do you filter out the duplication?

After pondering this for a while, I came to the conclusion that the most accurate method would be to ask Damon of Tweetstats to calculate from his tweet sample the average number of clients used per user!

I also came to the conclusion that the lazy method is to assume the vast majority of Twitter users _would_ visit the Twitter.com site at least once a month - to update their profile, use search.twitter.com or to vanity check their profile etc.

The best answer is of course, ask @twitter, except they are notoriously secretive on the subject of just how many twitter users there really are. (For example, Twitter IDs are no longer sequentially generated and @biz went on to tell @jkottke:

“However, the way we number Twitter updates has switched back and forth a few times which pretty much screws up the exactness of your analysis.”)

Therefore, if anyone asks you how many Australians are on Twitter, just say 679,000!

Symantec recently released their free 2008 report on Global Internet Security trends.

It’s bursting with interesting nuggets of Internet security research, heck, it’s practically a gold mine - check out three of the highlights:

1. Did You Know You Can Buy Compromised Credit Cards for $0.06 Each?

Credit card information was the most popular item for sale, comprising 32% of all ‘underground economy’ goods and services? And did you know obtaining said credit card information started from just $US0.06 each (like all good economies, there was a discount for buying in bulk).

2. China - The Most Infected Country, Buenos Aires-  The Most Infected City

• China had the most bot-infected computers in 2008, accounting for 13 percent of the worldwide total
• Buenos Aires was the city with the most bot-infected computers in 2008, accounting for 4 percent of the worldwide total.

China and Brazil have some of the highest software piracy rates in the world. Because pirate software is typically unable to use automated security patches, it is likely many computers in these two countries have not been patched against virulent worms like the Conficker W32.Downadup infection.

Above Chart: Top 10 countries ranked by W32.Downadup infections

Source: Symantec

3. Mozilla Browsers Take Gold in War Against Vulnerabilities

Mozilla browsers had a window of exposure to a sample set of 83 vulnerabilities of less than one day in 2008 before being patched, just in front of Opera (1 day) but well ahead of Chrome (3 days) and Internet Explorer (7 days).

“Of all the browser vendors examined, Mozilla browsers maintained the shortest window of exposure while patching more vulnerabilities than other vendors. This may be indicative of their efforts to marshal the security community to responsibly report vulnerabilities through initiatives such as their Bug Bounty program.

The result of this effort is that more vulnerabilities are announced by the vendor at the time they are fixed, instead of being publicly reported by security researchers independently of the vendor. It is also worth noting that independent browser vendors, such as Opera and the Mozilla Foundation, had a shorter window of exposure in 2008 than the major operating system vendors, such as Apple and Microsoft.”

That’s just 3 highlights from this insightful 110 page report. I highly recommend the PDF download. Of course, Symantec’s ulterior goal is to scare the crap out of you and attract more customers, and damned if this report doesn’t do the job.

Download the PDF here.

How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy by Lucas Ng

This is the slidedeck I used to present on the topic “How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy” at SMX Sydney 2009.

In the presentation I used some great case studies from the folks over at Komarketing Associates, PPC Hero and Marketing Experiments.

I was damn nervous but got some great positive feedback. Definitely hoping to speak again next year ;)

Download the powerpoint version for notes to each slide (requires slideshare login).

Laurel Papworth tweeted: “oh noes! @lucasng we have to make a number up then. Quick Quick, someone give me a guesstimate of NUMBER OF AUSTRALIANS ON TWITTER!”

My guesstimate: 300,000 Australian Twitter accounts*.

Why?

Nielsen Netview, which uses research panels to sample the Australian population, reports there were 149,000 Australian Twitter.com users in Jan-09:

Meanwhile, Hitwise reckons Twitter.com was the 100th most visited website (measured by Australian daily visits) in March.

Hitwise also reports that from January 2009 to March 2009, Twitter’s market share of visits has more than tripled.

Using the Nielsen figures of 150K as a starting point and looking at the January to March growth rate in Hitwise, I guesstimate that there are probably ~300K Australian Twitter accounts as of March 2009. Note that the Hitwise figures don’t account for Twitter API access.

So that’s pretty darn impressive but let’s compare Twitter with Facebook and Mysapce, the big two social networks:

• Facebook: 4,821,580 active users (source: FaceBook Advertising - as of 23rd March 2009)
• Myspace: 2,362,000 unique browsers (source: Nielsen Netratings, Jan-09)
• Twitter : ~300,000 accounts

Twitter is in the media everywhere and has a high awareness (then again, so did Second Life, ugh). However, it has not quite reached mainstream usage.

Do you agree or disagree with my back-of-the-napkin calculations? Will Twitter become a mainstream social network and/or medium for communication?

Note: Standard measurement disclaimers apply. We’re comparing apples to oranges to pears with regards to users, browsers and accounts.

*edit: made some adjustments after @problogger got an updated chart from Hitwise, showing Twitter.com has gone from 100th to 85th most popular Aussie site.