There have been many questions asked on the value of Twitter traffic for companies and it seems finally they will be some answers one would get as there is a new product coming in directly from Twitter. When one opts for Twitter to post their website links and details, one of the major challenges they face is that they don’t exactly understand how much traffic, and therefore the financial benefit, they’re receiving by using Twitter. Till now, the micro-blogging giant had not really done a great deal to solve the problem, but had many people talking with the rolling in of the t.co link shortener a few weeks ago.
Twitter Web Analytics has been rolled out now and still one can say that it is not the ultimate predicting solution for the Twitter’s traffic questions, but the reply by Twitter which has been acknowledged at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 noted that it is a “fundamental” first step. Basically, this is the first option a website can use if they have opted for Twitter to extend its reach to people across the web for all its content. This would act more like just a basic tracker for the website promoters.
Twitter used the TechCrunch platform appropriately enough as its Web Analytics delivered real-time data for the last seven days. The same week even saw TechCrunch noting almost 100,000 tweets with links to its content, evolving into roughly 523,300 clicks back to the site. If one looks at the average, every tweet would equal five click-backs to the website.
Apart from basic tracking, other facets of the analytics platform would enable site managers to notice which all contents are driving the most traffic and most shared items. Moreover, it could even help the developers as they would be in for guidance as to determine where a Tweet button might fit on the site best.
Talking about the analytic results, Twitter admitted that mostly its larger corporate partners make use of the third-party services, with which they get analytics results that are much more advanced and complex. But Twitter would still roll out the system for a small beta group first and in the next few weeks it will be out for all website owners.
For content producers such as TV networks, newspapers and other media players, Twitter has become an essential part of the media strategy, which is only on the rise. Twitter has with this extension added an option for the website owners as till now only Bitly’s link-tracking and Chartbeat’s dashboard like analytics tools were only available. Additionally, this analytical tool-kit is coming in for use directly by the micro-blogging giant which can hold a higher amount of reliability as compared to others for Twitter.
Twitter, with this release would have its own version of the analytics which even has been out by Facebook and is available for both its pages and the ubiquitous “like” button. The tracking points might just be a bit different as Facebook provides tracking for brands and publishers who use these tools to track who is engaging with their content via Facebook, while in case of Twitter it would help a website owner to note who has their interactions in with the content on their site via tweets and retweets.
Twitter in in July had acquired a small Y Combinator-funded startup called BackType (founded in Toronto), which had an offering of a number of tracking and analytical tools that are now being offered as part of this rollout.