Twitter Fights Misconceptions as it Tries to Prove Its ROI to Marketers

The biggest misconception about Twitter? “That you have to tweet to use Twitter,” said CEO Dick Costolo in a "fireside chat" with Federated Media's John Battelle this week. Indeed, new research from Beevolve finds that 25 percent of Twitter users have never tweeted.

Costolo’s newfound celebrity on magazine covers, The Today Show, Charlie Rose, as well as a recent New York Times profile, is impressive for a brand that didn’t exist seven years ago. Now, it's up to an estimated revenue of $350 million this year and 140 million users, even as Wall Street and Silicon Valley mull over engagement and the "dark social" arts of social marketing. Twitter, meanwhile, is trying to get smarter about providing support and analytics to brand marketers grappling with the age-old question of demonstrating ROI.

There's still some debate about who, exactly, is on Twitter. Beevolve reports that the majority (53 percent) of Twitter users are female, like the color purple and average 208 followers. Also that 73.7 percent of users are between age of 15 and 25; and five of every ten tweets are sent from the US, followed by the UK, Australia, Brazil and Canada.

Recent comScore research, meanwhile, shows that Instagram is starting to overtake Twitter on mobile. Give it time, as former Twitter board member Mike McCue told the New York Times. “Twitter is an entirely new thing," the Flipboard CEO told the Times. "I like the fact that Twitter is unapologetic to that. Dick is the same way with his decisions.” 

Somewhere in between media and technology, at the crossroads of social and news, Twitter, may be short on characters but long on breaking the mold. But can it ride a wave of success projected to reach revenue of $1 billion and beyond by 2014?