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Twitter Growth Coming from Emerging Markets-Something to Keep an Eye On

May 27, 2014

If you are even a casual observer of contact center trends, you are no doubt aware of just how important multi-channel, actually, now omni-channel interactions have become for providing great customer experiences. Whether it is for listening to the voice of the customer for brand stewardship purposes (offensive as well as defensive), or for outbound campaigns, the adroit and proper use of social media has become a critical skill set. And, while all channels are important, Twitter is certainly one that must be top of mind given the speed at which things go viral once hash tagged.


With that said, Twitter has roughly one-third of the user base of Facebook, and for multi-national corporations having an idea of where Twitter growth is likely to come from is certainly a useful piece of information. It is why the latest and first-ever forecast of Twitter users worldwide from the researchers at eMarketer’s is insightful.

The forecasters at eMarketer are estimated that Twitter’s user base will increase 24.4 percent in 2014 and will continue with double-digit gains through 2018. Where much of this growth is likely to come from is in emerging markets.  

Where things really get interesting is in the regional analysis.  eMarketer estimates that the number of Twitter users in Asia-Pacific has already passed those in North America and Western Europe by a substantial amount.  They even add the caveat that their figures exclude China since Twitter is banned there.

In 2014, the Asia-Pacific region will account for 32.8 percent of all Twitter users, compared with 23.7 percent in North America. By 2018, Asia-Pacific will more than double North America’s share, breaking the 40 percent mark in global market share. If China is on the Twitter map by that point, that share is likely to be significantly higher. In 2018, the prediction is that Twitter will grow 10.7 percent to reach nearly 400 million users globally. 

The eMarketer forecast looks at Twitter’s total users by region and country based on an analysis of approximately 400 data points from more than 90 sources, including Twitter company releases, survey and traffic data from research firms and regulatory agencies, historical trends, internet and mobile adoption trends, and country-specific demographic and socioeconomic factors. They note the discrepancy between their forecast and the reported monthly numbers from Twitter (255 million monthly active users in 2013) is a result of eMarketer relying heavily on consumer survey data to weed out business accounts, multiple accounts for individual users and other sources of potential double-counting.

As can be seen from the chart, Twitter growth is heavily weighted in emerging markets. India and Indonesia are prime examples, whose already large installed base is expected to explode with both experiencing increases well above 50 percent this year with a lot of head room given the growing population of people with Internet access, particularly mobile.  

The company also notes that while Twitter user growth in the U.S. is maturing, and by 2015 is likely to be in single digits, the U.S. market will remain critical because it accounted for nearly three-quarters of Twitter’s total ad revenues in 2013, according to Twitter. Plus, even with maturation of the market, during the forecast period the U.S. will remain the single largest country in terms of the number of individual Twitter users representing over 20 percent of all Twitter users worldwide.

As noted at the top, knowing where the voices are coming from, and will be in the future is obviously important to both those planning contact center operations and marketers.  What is clear is that in an increasingly global and connected market, those non-U.S. voices are ones to keep an eye on. 




Edited by Maurice Nagle



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