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A brand new Twitter client launched today, claiming to bring Twitter to the masses. Seesmic Look comes from the French company Seesmic who already have a number of desktop and web clients to their name.

Seesmic Look is a Windows desktop client (Microsoft are partners in the venture, in the same week that a certain Mr Gates joined Twitter no less!) that is essentially a slimmed down version of a Twitter client. It looks great: really slick and very 2.0 but without any of the scary features and long, tedious setup you might find on the more serious Twitter clients.

Seesmic has also signed up a number of other partners all of whom can feature their Twitter account as a ‘channel’ on the application – these include a number of media companies – including the Huffington Post, Kodak, Red Bull, CNN Money, SOTS, and Time.

Having had a quick play with it, the software is certainly very impressive. It is easy to do a number of different tasks, but the functionality isn’t what you would expect from a traditional Twitter client so does take a bit of getting used to. However, for Twitter newbies, this won’t matter of course.

Getting the application to the masses will be more of a challenge for Seesmic, but as long as they can overcome this not insurmountable, but cumbersome obstacle – I’m sure Microsoft will help – there is no reason why Seesmic Look won’t do the business.

Following various reports over the last few weeks about the state of Twitter’s popularity, today Hubspot has released its third ‘State of the Twittersphere‘ report.

The report is based on the 5 million Twitter accounts and 6 million tweets that Hubspot collects through its Twitter Grader tool and therefore is based on some fairly solid data. It also compares performance to its two previous reports released earlier in 2009.

So what does it tell us?

• Growth has fallen from a high of 13% in March of 2009 to 3.5% in October 2009, the most recent month for which we have data – note this is still growth, just not as fast as at the site’s peak in 2009
• In the last seven months, the average Twitter account holder has become “less of a newbie”. Why is this? The report suggests: “The change may be a reflection of the slowing growth rate. Because of the slowing growth, today’s population of Twitter users has been using the tool longer than the population several months ago.”
  • Today the average Twitter account has 300 followers; in July 2009, it had 70
  • The average account now follows 173 accounts; in July 2009 it was only following 4
  • The average account today has posted 420 updates; in July 2009 that number was 119
• There is better adherence to ‘best practices’
  • 53% of users had their bio completed (compared to 24% in July 2009)
  • 65% had their location (compared to 31%)
  • 41% had their web address added (compared to 20%)
• As with the previous Sysomos research, Twitter’s international reach is increasing; 15% of the top 20 Twitter locations in July 2009 were outside North America, now that figure stands at 40%
• In terms of user characteristics, there were some other really interesting stats:
  • 82% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers
  • 81% of Twitter users are following less than 100 people
  • Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of total tweets
  • 10-11 pm is the most active hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day – I’m assuming this is across time zones as it is not referenced specifically in the report

There has been a lot of noise in the last few weeks about how Twitter’s growth, particularly in the US, has levelled off.

But new research from Sysomos reveals that in the rest of the world at least, the micro-blogging service is as popular as ever.

The study, conducted during October and December 2009 found that the number of US unique users was 50.8%, a sharp drop from 62.1% in June 2009 – suggesting that there has been significant growth elsewhere in the globe:

“For location, the most significant difference in users was a surge in Brazil, which accounted for 8.8% of unique users, an increase of more than four-fold from 2% in June. Twitter users in Indonesia accounted for 2.4% of the population, compared with less than 0.5%, while Twitter users in Germany rose to 2.5% from 1.5%.”

When cities were examined, London still leads the way with the biggest population in terms of unique users (2.08%), while Los Angeles has 1.63%, Sao Paulo (1.47%), New York (1.44%) and Chicago (1.2%). Despite London’s lead in terms of users, the UK capital is pipped by New Yorkers when it comes to the number of tweets generated – make what you will of that one!

These are interesting statistics, but what can we learn? It seems that the rest of the world is really getting the micro-blogging bug and usage is certainly increasing outside the US. Detractors point to the fact that usage in the US is actually slowing quickly, but as all good PRs know, it’s not necessarily about the numbers, but the power of the influencers in the audience that really matters.

Julian March, executive producer at Sky News Online, has revealed to Journalism.co.uk that Tweetdeck (the leading Twitter desktop client) will be installed “on all staff machines within a month”.

Sky has been slowly increasing its use of Twitter having appointed a ‘Twitter correspondent’ last year and rolling out the @skynewsbreak account.

March states:

“The big change for us in 2010 is evolving how social media plays a role in our journalism. We no longer ghettoise it to one person, but are in the process of embedding throughout the whole team…”

At Wildfire, we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of journalists using Twitter over the last year or so. There are a number of reasons for this. We’ve seen journalists using Twitter to publicise their recent articles, communicate directly with their readers and also, increasingly, to source stories or find spokespeople.

For a PR, this is a really exciting development. I now talk to journalists on Twitter every single day. Not just about work-related issues, but anything that comes up – from cricket to snow. This enables us all to build closer relationships with the journalists we work with.

In the tech sector, where technologies like this are adopted quickly by journalists, this has been a common exercise for a while now.

The move by Sky suggests that more and more journalists will soon be on Twitter, which can only be a good thing for all of us in the PR industry.

Retweeting – the process by which you repeat (or retweet) a tweet written by someone else – is standard currency on Twitter. By retweeting someone else, you are assigning value to what they’ve said or shared. And by being retweeted, you are expanding the awareness of your brand and your reputation on Twitter and beyond.

It’s the way that messages spread, virally, around the Twittersphere and, for that reason, is the holy grail for brands.

Controversially, Twitter has recently revamped the way that retweets work, but despite this, the power of the RT still remains. So what makes a perfect retweetable tweet? Here are my top five tips:

1. Brevity – When you retweet and credit the original author, additional content can be added to the tweet. If the original message is 130 characters, there won’t be much space left, meaning you will have to edit the original message to get the character count down.

Try to keep your tweet short and snappy to make retweeting easier

2. Content – Be a bit of a tease by giving enough content to hook readers, but leave them wanting more. Controversial statements and questions all work well in enticing your followers to RT.

Content is king and brevity is important, so use your words wisely

3. Links – The link is usually the call to action of any tweet. Often, you will link to a page that provides more information about the tweet, for example a blog post or website page. Studies have shown tweets that contain a link are more likely to be retweeted, but use a URL shortener to make sure you don’t use up too many characters – bit.ly is the most common and most ‘trusted’.

Include a link and make sure it’s bit.ly

4. Timing – It goes without saying that if there are more people using Twitter when you send out your message, then there is a greater chance that someone will see and then retweet the message.

Tweet between 3pm and 4pm on a Thursday or a Friday as this is when Twitter is busiest

5. Relevance – There are two key points here. Firstly, know your audience: make sure your content is perfectly tuned to your particular set of followers as these are the people that will get the ball (or tweet) rolling. Secondly, be topical: if possible, try and tweet on issues that are in the news or ideally, that are just breaking.

Engage your followers by being relevant and topical

Following these five steps should help you maximise your retweet potential, but remember, this is not an exact science; sometimes it is the tweet you least expect that will be successful.

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It’s been quite a year for Twitter. Despite not yet making much money [the pic is a bit misleading, I know], popularity in the micro-blogging platform has soared in 2009. Outside the US, global figures in September reached 58.4 million – a 949% increase on this time last year.

With search engines falling over themselves to get tweets showing up in results and with other social networks clamouring to get Twitter integrated, the future certainly seems bright.

So why the success? What puts Twitter above the other micro-blogger pretenders-to-the-throne and why is it seen as posing such a threat to more established players?

Back to basics

Following feature-rich networks like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, Twitter is bold in its simplicity. The focus is very much on user generated content, with supporting material such as background images or profile text kept low-key. It’ll be interesting to see whether Twitter is brave enough to stick to the ’simpler is better’ format, or whether recent tweaks (like Twitter Lists and the new retweet functionality) are precursors for future functionality additions.

The micro-blogging craze

Blogging has been popular for some time now, but it has a few downsides, primarily that it is time-consuming and labour-intensive. Micro-blogging solves these issues. It is easy to use and the 140 character limit makes writing even the most complex tweets a painless, quick and easy experience. Time-pressed, would-be bloggers have been flocking to Twitter to realise their aim of broadcasting to the world.

Opt-in

So many communication methods fall down because of one thing: spam. Twitter effortlessly gets around this problem by requiring users to opt-in to messages they want to receive. If a user is being too noisy, commercial or irrelevant, the solution is easy: simply unfollow.

The API

Coming back to the first point, Twitter’s simplicity means that it is very straightforward to take its core data and create other ways of presenting or interacting with it. Because of this and through its open API, all manner of desktop clients, analytics tools and gimmicks have sprung up around the service. This has fuelled the interest in the service, driven by an active and dedicated developer community.

All brands are welcome

From the beginning, Facebook has always been about ‘real’ people. Twitter is about real people too, but it’s also open to anyone or anything, from people, brands and characters to animals, ideas and bridges. This open-door policy has seen businesses flocking to the network to begin communicating more directly with their public. Facebook, possibly seeing the error of its ways, has been quick to  embrace business interaction further, but Twitter is unique in putting all users on an equal footing.

Media lovefest

If we look at the reason for Twitter’s growth in the UK in 2009, the media have played a huge role with daily mentions of the network almost guaranteed in at least one national newspaper. From Stephen Fry threatening to quit, to David Cameron’s glib remarks, Twitter has been at the centre of our news agenda.

So why the interest? Well, the openness of the service means that Twitter provides a constant stream of fodder for our celebrity-obsessed hacks. On top of this, Twitter is a great way for journalists to communicate with readers, source stories and build up their own fan bases.

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At the end of October, Twitter began rolling out its newest feature: Lists. Lists allows users to create groups of other Twitter accounts, which they can then share with their followers.

It is a good way of keeping track of tweets from a certain group or sub-section of tweeters, allowing you to track their updates and/or find new people to follow.

The introduction of Lists has seen people busily listing their interesting followers. There are good reasons why Lists have become so popular and why brands should consider using Lists as an integral part of their tweeting:

1. Demonstrate your knowledge and spread the love

It’s always a great compliment to be publicly recognised for something. Whether it is through being musically inclined or just as someone’s friend, Lists are a great way for recommending certain followers within a niche. You’ll also get credit from those you add to a list; they may even add you in return.

2. Organise your followers

For those who don’t already use a desktop client, like Tweetdeck, to organise their Twitter feed into groups, Lists can be helpful to keep up to date with a specific group of people you are interested in.

3. Rank popularity, or usefulness

It used to be that you could get a pretty good idea of a Twitter account’s ‘value’ or ‘influence’ by the number of followers it had, but now with the number of spammy accounts using automated software to find followers, it’s getting harder to tell who is popular and who is junk. With people organising their followers into Lists, the number of Lists an account is placed on becomes another good way of determining influence, especially within certain subject areas.

For brands, these are three very compelling reasons for using Lists. It is also a good way to bring together all the tweeters in your organisation under one banner.

With this in mind, we’ve been playing around with Lists ourselves. You can now easily check out what the Wildfire team are tweeting about here: http://twitter.com/wildfirepr/wildfire-pr

It is sure to go down as one of the social media case studies, taking pride of place alongside Dominos, Motrin and DellHell.

I am, of course, talking about middle-England’s favourite home furnishing company, Habitat, who this week was the centre of a social media scandal of epic proportions.

If you missed it, here is the quick-fire low-down:

Habitat’s marketing or PR department, having picked up some stories in the media about this great, new tool called Twitter, felt it was about time they got in on the action and so duly signed up and started tweeting.

Now, Twitter is esentially a very simple tool to use; you get some followers, start following some other people and begin transmitting a few messages.  Habitat though decided to try and run before they could walk and came across hashtags – a way of ‘tagging’ tweets to make it easy to follow particular themes or events.

Unfortunately, Habitat didn’t really understand the last bit and some bright spark, seeing that thousands of tweeters were paying attention to certain hashtags in particular – e.g. #iPhone #Apple #Mousavi – decided to tag their tweets with these in order to get their message out to a wider audience.

Oops.

The long and the short of it is that it didn’t take very long for Habitat to be found out, and once they were, the floodgates opened with angry tweeters, bloggers, social media experts and, eventually, the national media quick to wade in.

And now, Habitat has responded with, quite rightly, its tail between its legs:

I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message. We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again.

It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community.

This is a good response; credit to Habitat for issuing it and holding their hands up. And the Twitter account (@HabitatUK) looks much better, so something to build on for the future.

But I do wonder whether much of the negative publicity this has caused could have been stopped much sooner if the apology had been swift and quick. The digital world moves very fast and, by letting it run for the best part of a week without a response, Habitat merely added fuel to the fire through their silence.

If you are an avid micro-blogging user then you will no doubt be aware of the perenial struggle to condense the brilliant thought or idea you want to share with the world into a mere 140 characters.

When you add long, rambling URLs into the mix, the headache increases.

Which is why URL shorteners like bitly and tinyurl quickly came to the rescue, offering spaced-out tweeters a much needed character boost.

But now these knights in shining armour are threatening many components of the world-wide-web and the future of our long-agonised-over mini blog posts.

The fear is that, if one of these shortening services were for some reason to fold, then the links they pointed to would be lost forever, leaving a wide array of meaningless tweets, status updates and blog posts, with useless links.

Dave Winer (via Steve Winton) has one possible solution:

“One easy way to lower the cost of URL-shortening is to use our own domain names in place of tinyurl.xom, bit.ly, tr.im, et al. Any one of those services could take the lead here by allowing for that. Let me map my own domain onto theirs, easily back up all my data, and give me the ability to switch services when I want, or when I need to.”

And now, following the launch of the Diggbar, there is a new threat from URL shorteners that wrap your page in a frame. There are many downsides to this as well as Andrew Girwood expertly highlights over on Econsultancy.

I’m surprised this issue hasn’t been raised before now and the solution outlined sounds a good one. Now, it just needs someone to come up with an easy-to-use implementation and we’ll be set.

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Today O2 has boldy proclaimed that Twitter is being increasingly used by SMEs and is becoming an incredibly beneficial tool for them.

And (somehow) through a survey of only 500 businesses, O2 managed to (guess?) estimate that 700,000 small businesses are using Twitter for commercial purposes.

These numbers are as hard to refute as they are to create, but I guess it shows (again) that Twitter, and it use in business, is here to stay.

Twitter gives brands and businesses unparalleled visibility into what their clients or customers are thinking. But how should it be used? There are no rules or conventions; the technology is too young.

Whilst I am all for businesses trying to experiement and engage through social media, it has to be approached with caution.

And this is the main problem I have with O2’s ‘research’. The businesses who are saving £5,000 using Twitter will have well thought-out social media strategies.

Twitter has great potential for brands (Dell claims to have made $1M through the service), but using it for financial gain takes time, thought and care.