Facebook may be the planet’s largest social network but Twitter gets the most coverage in the international press.
Some people don’t think Twitter is a social network, they believe it’s a live information stream and breaking news service created by its users. Others believe it wouldn’t exist without the social element at the centre of its DNA. Even Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey finds it difficult to define what Twitter actually is.
“I don’t have an answer and I don’t think we need to have an answer,” said Dorsey at All Things Digital’s D9 conference in New York this year when asked what Twitter is. “Twitter is the world, it reflects the world, and it’s different things to different people at different times and we need to embrace that. It does present a messaging and marketing challenge, but that’s what it is.”
People, he said, “come to Twitter and they change their usage tweet by tweet”.
What is becoming clear is Twitter’s growing influence, not just on society but on the way the media operates. The majority of the world’s biggest stories in 2011 broke on Twitter and Twitter users have often shaped public thinking – a role that until recently was largely owned by traditional media organs.
In 2011, Twitter received more media coverage than any other social network or new media company. According to stats from Highbeam Research, Twitter was discussed in about 50% of all US media coverage of social networks throughout 2011. Facebook received 45% of all coverage. LinkedIn landed 3.33% of coverage, MySpace 1.3% and FourSquare 0.71%. Strangely, Google+ wasn’t mentioned in the report.

Twitter’s influence
This year Facebook attempted to get more of the media action by launching its subscribe feature, as well as a host of other features dedicated to sharing information in real time. However, 2012 is looking like being Twitter’s year again. Earnings are soaring and the company is on an aggressive expansion plan. eMarketer predicts Twitter will post $259.9 million in revenues in 2012, an 86.3% jump from 2011.
Twitter’s success is actually defined by its users and as more of the world’s most influential people are using the service to break news and share stories, it looks like Twitter will continue to dominate the traditional news sphere for the foreseeable future.

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