Both Facebook and Twitter users have similar profiles for gender (higher percentage of females) and income (Twitter users have a slightly lower average income than Facebook users, but not dramatically so).  There are a few areas, however, in which the users of these two services diverge.

The first set includes ages and educational backgrounds.  (Note: despite what it says in the graph, the label “in college” should read “some college,” meaning they went but didn’t graduate, not necessarily that they’re currently attending.  Similarly, “high school” means that they are either currently in high school or high school was the highest grade level achieved.) Because so many social media users are under 25 – 40% in Facebook’s case, 17% in Twitter’s, one of the most glaring differences between the two populations – the educational categories of “high school” and “some college” clearly include people still attending school as well as those who left and are in older age cohorts.  21% of Facebook’s users are in or never went beyond high school vs. 7% of Twitter’s, while 48% of Twitter’s users are in or never went beyond college vs. 28% of Facebook’s.  Despite the caveats, this difference is pretty dramatic.

Another difference surrounds how users participate in the two networks.  Here again the definitions of the reporting categories need some explanation before the data can make sense.  The authors report users who “login daily” and “update their status daily.”  Initially everyone thought that “login” meant checked in and “update status” meant posted something, but that’s not the case.  After checking with the authors, they clarified for us that “login” measures those accessing the service from the respective company’s website (facebook.com or twitter.com), while “updating status” measures those using the company’s API through an app (could be Facebook’s iPhone app or Twitter for iPhone as well as UberTwitter or Tweetdeck or any other app that posts to one or both networks).   There is some overlap here (the same user could go to twitter.com and post a tweet via UberTwitter in the same day), but one is not a subset of the other.  With these definitions in mind:  41% of Facebook users login at facebook.com everyday but only 12% update their status daily via an app – not a surprise.  In Twitter’s case, only 27% of users login via twitter.com everyday while 52% update their status daily via an app – again, not a surprise but a clear confirmation that the vast majority of daily activity on Twitter occurs via apps.

Finally, users of the two networks differ substantially in the way they interact with brands.  More people follow a brand on Facebook (40%) than Twitter (25%), but of those who do follow brands, 51% of Facebook users purchase that brand compared to 67% of Twitter users.  So for a brand, getting a Twitter follower is in effect 31% more valuable as a customer prospect than getting someone to become a fan on Facebook.  Regardless, the raw number itself is stunning: two-thirds of the people who follow a brand on Twitter will end up buying a product from them.  Not a surprise that consumer brands increasingly see Twitter as an awesome marketing tool!

eMarketer reported on a new study on Monday measuring the value of a Facebook Fan at $136.38.  The study found that “fans” of a business spend substantially more money with that business over time than non-fans. The study looked at a diverse group of brands, ranging from Nokia to Nutella, and regardless of their market segment, they were all able to see markedly greater value in their fan customers, including larger and more frequent purchases, greater propensity to recommend the brand and increased brand loyalty.

What does this mean for you, a tweeter trying to grow your following and increase the reach of your message? This study demonstrates the value of communicating with your customers in a high-engagement forum. Twitter and Facebook provide unique opportunities for you to build a dynamic relationship with your customers in which you can speak directly to them and they can answer you right back.  The result of these relationships is that your customer “fans” spend more money than their non-fan counter parts. Whatever social media platform you use to interact with your customers, it is crucial that you foster engagement with the fans most relevant to your business. It is those targeted fans who will track your communications day after day, and who will appreciate the true value of your brand.

What differences have you noticed in your follower-customer base compared to your non-follower customer?

On Monday, TweetUp went live with our tweeter search results. In the last month since we announced the company, we received more than 75,000 keywords in our database from Tweeters with nearly 10,000,000 combined followers.

We have already served millions of tweeter impressions, and we look forward to continuing to build the relevance of the search, expand to more distribution partners, and help you build your following with TweetUp.

Twitter Terms of Service

Twitter announced new terms of service on Monday, and there have been some questions if those affect us in any way. We completely comply with the new terms of service and we look forward to working with Twitter and all of our partners to enhance the Twitter ecosystem.

As promised, we have started serving search results full of the world’s best tweeters. Our ranking algorithm is hard at work, continually analyzing, computing for relevance, indexing, and reindexing as our database of keywords and tweeters continues to grow. Currently, our ranking algorithm does not take bids into account, because bids cannot be placed yet, so the results you’re seeing are organically optimized and ranked tweeters.

We’ve started serving results through our Twidget, first – on great sites such as TechCrunch and Business Insider – and soon, our Twitter client partners – such as Seesmic, Tweetdeck, and Twidroid – will begin hosting our search as well.

We’ve added a live Twidget to the TweetUp homepage, so you can give it a try. Search for the topics that interest you most to see great results full of thought leaders, iconic figures, and experts. Enrich your Twitter experience by following the best of the best in the areas that interest you the most.

You may notice that our Twidget only shows great tweeters. As part of defining our product offering, we have been wrestling with the best way to display tweets to ensure that their impact is maximized.  Specifically, we’re evaluating how many to show, whether to link them with the bios of their authors or whether to show them stand-alone.  This is an important product decision for us, so until it is finalized, we are limiting our launch to recommended tweeters.

Our search is brand new, so there may be some queries that return no results but we’re working to expand our coverage daily. All of us at TweetUp want your feedback. Tell us about your search experience on our Facebook page, contact us through Twitter, or email us.

To access this new functionality, simply click here, or click “LOGIN” link at the top of Tweetup.com.

Enter the email address you used to sign up for TweetUp, the password you set when you confirmed your account, and press “Sign In.” (If you never created a password, you can click the link below the Sign In button to set one. You can also use this page if you’ve forgotten your password.)

We truly appreciate your patience as we’ve worked hard developing the necessary tools for you to start growing your targeted following. Like all of TweetUp, Account Management will be going through major upgrades in the upcoming weeks to include more functionality such as editing your bio, placing bids on your keywords, and tracking your account performance.

Check out our Support section for more information on the Account Manager and how to use it.

• No more free $100 account giveaway. For those of you who registered early enough to qualify for this, thank you for early support. For those of you who didn’t make it in time, don’t worry, your tweets and keywords are being indexed and will still show up in search results. Once you decide that you’d like to increase a bid on any keyword you’ve entered, beyond the default $0.00, you’ll have to authorize us to charge your card on file.
• International sign ups. When we first launched TweetUp, we were only accepting registrations from U.S. users. That’s all changed. Now anyone in the world can register to have their tweets boosted. We always intended to allow international users to use TweetUp, but it wasn’t included in our initial launch plans. The global response, however, was too great to ignore, so we bumped international signup to the top of our development cycle. If you’re reading this from outside the U.S. and you’ve been waiting to sign up for TweetUp, we thank you for your patience, and encourage you to sign up now.
• We launched TweetUp Support. Have questions about TweetUp? Want to know what it means to be a TweetUp Partner? What’s a Twidget? These are all topics covered in our new support section. Check out TweetUp.com/support for the most up to date information on picking keywords, known issues, FAQs, account troubleshooting, and more. Use TweetUp 101 to learn about how to optimize your tweets, bio, keywords, and bids for maximum exposure on the TweetUp network. You’ll want to check the support section periodically for explanations and how-to’s as we add new features and release new TweetUp products.

These are just a few of the things that we’ve accomplished so far. We’re also constantly refining our search algorithm as more people sign up and more tweets and keywords are indexed, as well as expanding our distribution network. When we launch search, TweetUp tweets will be seen by over 50 million people on over a half a billion pages every month, and we’re working hard to grow that network every day.

Stay tuned for more TweetUpdates. We have very exciting things happening over the next few weeks, check back here to find out more about them.

I was very late to the Twitter revolution, only signing up for my account mid last year (2009).  As  a beginner, I decided to try to Tweet only very unique nuggets, very rarely, and although that worked for me, it was rare enough – a few a month – to not be very engaging to either me, or my small following.

Then late last year and early this year three big events going on in the world changed my life with Twitter.

First was the Copenhagen conference in December.  I didn’t attend, but every day the climate sessions were continuing, I was eagerly reading everything that was going on.  After the first week, I had some insights, about how there are other important reasons we need to expand our renewable energy besides just climate change.  I started thinking about that more and more, and then spent the better part of a day writing a very thoughtful blog post about this, entitled, “It’s not just about Climate Change, it’s about Freedom.”  I was very proud of it.  I posted it, and then Tweeted it, saying, “With Copenhagen going on right now, I realized renewable energy is not JUST about Climate, it’s about Freedom. Read more at…”

Well, after press TweetIt, I was really excited for all the response I was going to get.

Just a moment later, I went to the Twitter search field and typed in “Copenhagen” and sure enough, there was my Tweet, second from the top, and it said, 10 seconds ago!  Yeah!

I couldn’t wait for all the followers and feedback I was going to get from my great Tweet and Blog post.

A moment later I typed in “Copenhagen” again into Twitter, and I was OFF the PAGE!, bumped by things like:

Copehagen sucks, 2 seconds ago.

Where do I find mittens in Copenhagen, 7 seconds ago.

Flying to Copenhagen, 11 seconds ago.

And so on.

Really?  I had put ½ day into my thoughtful post and I was gone, bumped by this in just 15 seconds.  I thought I could at least get my 15 minutes of fame, not just 15 seconds!

This was my first realization that there needs to be some way for more thoughtful and potentially useful things to survive a little longer on Twitter.  Not just for me, who wants to get the word out, but for others, who are looking for valuable insights and information on Twitter.

So the first seed of TweetUp was planted at that point.

That seed blossomed into something much bigger while I was Tweeting from Davos in January and TED in February.

I had the honor of attending the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland.  From there, I heard amazing people speak on panels about education, science, the financial crisis, vaccines, and so much more.  In every session, I heard such amazing wisdom that I was excited to Tweet, and I did.  But there was a 9-hour time difference from California, and unless someone was already following me, all my Tweets were WAY scrolled off the screen by Tweets about snow conditions in Davos, complaints about Davos, and other Tweets that, while valuable to someone, only have a utility for a short period, whereas some of the things going on at the conference I felt had value for a much longer time.

Finally, at TED, I was in the right time zone as the people I wanted to have a conversation with, and I composed hundreds of Tweets over the 4 days of the conference.  I started by Tweeting everything interesting I saw or heard, and then tried to do even better by focusing on unique Tweets, or my observations or reactions to events, or to Tweets that added value by providing context, or links, or analysis.  Trying to stay above the noise on the #TED feed, I kept that stream open in one column in my client.  Doing that, I read EVERY Tweet about TED during TED, all 10,000 in all over the 4 days.  Out of the 10,000 Tweets, I’d say about 300 were great, and about 9,700 were noise.  The noise included a litany of:

I love TED

I hate TED

TED is great

TED is elitist

TED is bogus

How do I get to TED

Where is TED

Who is TED

What does TED stand for

I can’t find tickets for TED on Craigslist

I envy TED

I dream of TED

Lucky TED

…and so many more

And the great Tweets included moving stories, backstage updates from Bill Gates, insults from Sarah Silverman, and so many more.

I was so immersed in the TED / Twitter experience that I finally truly realized the amazing power of Twitter.

But I also felt overwhelmed at the poor signal-to-noise ratio.  If only there were some way to filter out those 9,700 Tweets and only see the 300 great ones.

But how?

Well that was the inspiration of TweetUp!

Our goal with TweetUp is to bring those best Tweets UP to the top of search results.

How can we do that?

Well our idea is to use an algorithm that includes who the Tweet is, how many followers they have, what their Klout/influence score is, how often that Tweet is re-Tweeted, how often the Bit.ly link is followed, and how much the Tweeter bids for that Tweet to be spread.

That last item, the bid, and a bidded marketplace, is maybe the most revolutionary, as we hope to get a very strong signal from Tweeters as to how important and valuable their Tweets are from their bid.  The bid will be a price, like $0.01 per impression, for that Tweet to be boosted on particular keywords.  Say I Tweet something important on “#Davos – Financial Crisis” and I want that Tweet to be found by people who search for those keywords, I can bid a few cents per impression to get that Tweet to show up higher in the search results.  Not at the top, because if the Tweet is not relevant by the other criteria, no bid is high enough to boost it to the top.  But at least the bid will be included in the algorithm, which will make great things rise above the noise.

Our goal is to get these new TweetUp search results spread all over Twitter clients and all over the web.  Even before we have launched, we have signed a number of distribution deals that bring us more than 40,000,000 unique users and more than ½ billion monthly impressions. But that’s just the beginning.  We want to bring great Tweets and Tweeters to all the content and locations that are important to you.

That is our mission – it’s a big one – and we embark on that journey today.  We will have lots of challenges, but we are very excited, and we hope you join us on this mission, either as a Tweeter, a reader of Tweets, as a distribution partner, or as a fan.  Please write to me with your ideas – Bill@TweetUp.com, and I can’t wait to join the discussion with you.