20%of tweets contain brand names

A Penn State study found that in the US, 20% of tweets are about brands.

Researchers led by Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology, and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury looked at half a million tweets. 20% of them were apparently people 'asking and providing' product information. Assuming three million tweets a day, that would translate into 600k posts daily of direct relevance to brands.

'Providing product information' is a definition that's wide enough to include any tweets about a product or service - I went to this restaurant today, I bought this mobile phone and so on. I guess it is true that as a personal broadcasting system we do use Twitter to talk about stuff we buy or like / dislike a great deal.

According to the study authors, the large amount of brand data on Twitter can pretty much provide you with a sentiment map if you monitor and analyze tweets over time: What do your customers and non customers think about your product, what features are going down well / not so well, and how are your competitors faring.

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/123878