We have already written about the good relationship Twitter and live TV has together, then if you mix in pop music and the younger audiences, then Twitter is the ideal medium for the X-Factor stars to interact with their fans. It’s also a pretty good way for us to see which one has the fan base to take this year’s crown.

If the number of X-factor finalist Twitter fans has anything to go by on who wins X-Factor, then the X-Factor finalist Frankie Cacozza with 166,000 Twitter fans after just the first week is looking a good bet. Frankie already has almost half the official X-Factor’s own Twitter fan numbers. Second place so far is Janet Devlin who after singing Cold Play in week one has charmed her fan base. What is surprising is 2Shoes with 34,000 followers, they were dropped after week one but still have very impressive numbers. The older performers and the groups are far behind the girls and boys in terms of numbers. If Twitter has anything to go by Rhythmix should watch their backs.

We’ll be tracking the X-Factor finalists twitter accounts throughout this year’s series and show their progress and fan numbers.

X-Factor finalists on Twitter

Here are the X-Factor finalists on twitter accounts and fan numbers in order of most fans first.

1. Frankie Cacozza on Twitter – @FrankieCocozza 166,065
2. Janet Devlin on Twitter – @JanetJealousy 83,305
3. Amelia Lily on Twitter – @AmeliaLilyOffic 49,047
4. Craig Colton on Twitter – @CraigColtonUK 44,035
5. Marcus Collins on Twitter – @MarcuscollinsUK 42,806
6. 2Shoes on Twitter – @2shoesOfficial 34,684
7. The Risk on Twitter – @theriskoffic 28,336
8. James Michael on Twitter – @thejmichael 26,110
9. Nu Vibe on Twitter – @nuvibeoffic 24,559
10. Misha B on Twitter – @mishaBRYAN 24,039
11. Sophie Habibis on Twitter – @sophiehabibis 17,392
12. samantha brookes on Twitter – @SamiBrookesXfac 14,193
13. Kitty Brucknell on Twitter – @kittybrucknell 13,255
14. Jonjo Kerr on Twitter – @Jonjosephkerr 9,703
15. Rhythmix on Twitter – @rhythmixoffic 7,744
16. Johnny Robinson on Twitter – @jrmusicoffic 7,123

Globally, Facebook has experienced rapid growth. There were only 150 million registered users in January 2009. Today there are more than 500 million registered users (we go in more depth here: Facebook usage by country) Twitter in comparison currently has over 100 million registered users worldwide,
Foursquare has around 7 million and MySpace at its pre-2008 peak had over 100 million global users making Facebook the most dominant social network by far.

In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and Chief Executive, said it was “almost a guarantee” that the site would hit one billion users.

Fast Facebook Facts:

• Launched at Harvard in February 2004.
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the site.
• An average user has 130 friends.
• There are over 900 million objects in total that Facebook users can interact with, such as community pages.
• The average Facebook user is connected 80 pages, groups and events.
• The average member creates 90 pieces of content each month.
• More than 30 billion pieces of content, like photos, web links and news stories, are shared each month.
• About 70 per cent of Facebook users are from outside of the US.
• It took five months for Facebook to attract an extra 100 million users, from 400 million to 500 million.
• The site has yet to become the leading social network in Russia, China, Japan or Korea.
• Goldman Sachs valued the site at $50bn earlier this year.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8357243/Facebook-in-numbers-how-it-dominates-the-competition.html

1. Jenson Button (The_Real_JB) – Formula One Driver

Twitter Followers: 82,364
Jenson Button Twitter BIO: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 driver

Jenson Button is the current World Champion and is in a pretty impressive position in this year’s championship, Jenson still has time to tell his fans about his races: ‘Ferrari’s were all over the back of me. Mentally pretty draining I must say!! some points though. looking for a big haul of points in China!’.

2. David Lloyd (BumbleCricket) – Cricket Commentator

Twitter Followers: 64,179
David Lloyd Twitter Bio: Start the Car!

Possibly one of my favourite and when the Ashes was on he came out with brilliant questions like: “What do Athers and Beefy eat in the media canteen? Is that a stain on Gower’s trousers?”
David Lloyd or Bumble as everyone calls him is definitely one of cricket’s finest Twitterers and has got the whole Sky team interested in Twitter. He has even instigated a friendly competition with Jonathan Agnew on the BBC to see who can get the most followers.

3. Darren Bent (dbthetruth) Football Player

Twitter Followers: N/A (Told to turn off by manager)
Darren Bent Twitter Bio: ?????

Darren Bent wasn’t very happy about the amount of time it took to get a move from Spurs to Sunderland so much so he sent out a message on Twitter stating: “Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do I wanna go sunderland YES so stop f****** around, Levy. Sunderland are not the problem in the slightest.” So this seems to be the reason that new manager Steve Bruce has told Darren to turn off his Twitter account (until the next time Darren want to move clubs).

4. Will Carling (willcarling) – Ex-Rugby Player

Twitter Followers: 29,561
Will Carling Twitter Bio: Old, useless ex England rugby captain, has set up a rugby website, www.rucku.com, and is fascinated with the Twitter world.

Will Carling seems to love Twitter and is happy to chat away with other users. He likes to tweet live on England’s Six Nations performances and has been known to stick the boot into Martin Johnson’s England team.

5. Ian Poulter (Ianjamespoulter) – Golfer

Twitter Followers: 981,409
Ian Poulter Twitter Bio: Global tour golfer, play pgatour & europeantour. Massive Arsenal fan and also Orlando Magic fan. Love all Sports, Cars, most of all love my Family time

Ian Poulter was slammed after branding Tottenham fans “Yids” on his Twitter Poulter wrote: “Not talking about football after being beat by the yids.”
Maybe he should stick to talking about golf.

6. Andy Murray (andy_murray) – Tennis Player

Twitter Followers: 142,080
Andy Murray Twitter Bio: I play tennis.

Andy likes to tell people how lucky he is by Twittering after the Australian Open “Just bak from dinner. Bumpd in2 the guys from The Prodigy in hotel lobby.’

7. Helen Chamberlain (HellsBellsy) – TV Presenter

Twitter Followers: 19,861
Helen Chamberlain Twitter Bio: N/A

Ok well she’s not a sports personality but if you know football you know exactly who she is. Helen Chamberlain is the presenter of one of football’s longest-running shows – Soccer AM on Sky Sports. Hells Bellsy loves to tweet talking to her fellow Soccer AM presenter Max Rushden and telling him off for ‘you know you always wake me up honking your horn.’

8. Laura Robson (laurarobson5) – Tennis Player

Twitter Followers: 11,169
Laura Robson Twitter Bio: Hi, I’m Laura

Laura Robson doesn’t tweet that much, but hey she’s 16, she’s probably on Facebook and Bebo. In a similar way to a lot of other sports stars stars she likes to talk about other sports other than just her own. Like this comment where Laura talks about the recent Golf Masters ‘I’d just like to point out that as I predicted Mickelson took the title Unlucky to Westwood though, he played great throughout the week!’

9. David Haye (mrdavidhaye) – Boxer

Twitter Followers: 24,603
David Haye Twitter Bio: I’m a Pro Boxer from London England, I’m currently The Heavyweight Champion of the World. Welcome to my Twitter page

Another British World Champion on our list. And David is respectful to his fellow competitors in his tweets: ‘I’ve just heard John Ruiz has retired. I wish him well in the next chapter of his life. He was, is and will always be a Gallant Warrior.’

10. James Anderson (JimmyAnderson9) – Cricket Player

Twitter Followers: 38,031
James Anderson Twitter Bio: N/A

James Anderson likes to talk and wind-up his fellow cricketers and his friends through twitter including Darren Gough, Ronnie Irani, and Graeme Swan. The funniest moment for him on Twitter must have been when he said to fellow England international Tim Bresnan that he is a ‘at, cheating, smelly, fish-pitted, Yorkshire pie-eater.’

More popular than a cool pint of shandy on a bank holiday Monday, Twitter was positioned by many as the best thing that had ever happened to the Internet. There is no denying the fact that it is popular, very popular, with around 1 million user in mid-February.

We Love Twitter…

Everyone was using it and every single article and TV show seemed to be mentioning it. There was Barack Obama famously using it to win the US presidential election. The cleverest man in the UK, Stephen Fry was telling his 100,000s of followers about his travels, oh how we laughed. And then there was Oprah. Infact the “Oprah effect” on Twitter, as TechCrunch suggested, encouraged more than one million people to sign, and Hitwise said it led to a 43% spike in Twitter traffic. Plus many many more celebs (Shaq, Wolverine, Russel Brand, Jonathan Ross and my favourite Jeremy Paxman, got involved).

We Hate Twitter…

Now just a few months later, we have a bit of a morning after feeling and embarrassing hangover. President Obama didn’t write anything for weeks after he won, this great marketing machine seemed to stop once people had spent their vote. The Oprah effect too may have brought people online, with a massive 850,000 followers Oprah has managed just 29 updates after she first posted – The chat show hostess is now reportedly bored of Twitter.

Twitter is Boring – The Facts

These hard-hitting celebs are not the only ones who think Twitter is a bit like Ricky Martin. Apparently most people see it as a short-lived craze, enticing and the centre to everyone’s conversation at first, then a bit of a one-trick pony later. Twitter’s traffic is not as good as first thought, numbers are high but people are not getting into it. Apparently a Nielsen study has shown that 60% of Twitterers don’t return after the first month of joining.

Apparently at this current rate, Nielsen say that Twitter will only reach about 10% of online customers. – Something that probably needs to be told to the plethora of salesmen frequenting the said website.

Twitter still very popular and lots of traffic

Twitter may be like a large room of lots of people shouting and not a huge amount listening, but whatever we think, there is still many people turning up to have a yell. But if Twitter traffic is slipping we shouldn’t blame Twitter for the tedium, we should blame the content providers – us.

Twitter Usage

If you haven’t a Twitter you’re so 2007! Everyone has one nowadays including me – Andy Francos (hello!). So what can you do? You can type in a maximum message of 140 characters explaining what you’re up to. In terms of functionality – that’s about it! However, there is plenty more things Twitter can offer you, which we will touch on in a bit. But for now here is my message for you guys – which is known as a Tweet:

So all of my many followers (sure) will be able to read what I am up to and tweet back with comments of their own. Or Twitterers scouring the ‘Public Timeline’ – might even consider following you:

Everyone that is anyone has a Twitter account – check out the BBC, SkySports and FourFourTwo – who don’t even have to update their feeds regularly! An RSS feed can be setup so that news items appear as a Tweet – meaning that followers can keep up to date with the latest news and views of that organisation – brilliant!

Celebrity Twitters

Other than climbing a tree across the road with a pair of binoculars and a box of doughnuts – you don’t get to find out what your favourite celebrities are upto on a daily basis. You could have found out what Barack Obama, Larry David,Stephen Fry, Britney Spears and Lance Armstrong are up to! – Like I said, anybody that is anybody is on the sensation that is Twitter!

Help Engine

This is where it gets very interesting as Twitter is now defining a new way in which we search for information. Of course Google is the king of information, hence the enormous market share the big G has in the UK – but we are now seeing the creation of help engines – namely the big T.

Using this article as an example – I made a Tweet about famous people on Twitter:

Rather than going to a search engine and looking for the information, I asked my beloved followers if they new the answer to my question. Low and behold – I received a tweet back from HighRankings adviser and fellow SEO – Jill Whalen:

So in less than three minutes I’d received a great response to my query! Brilliant! You can also even search for Twitterers who include your keyword within their Tweets:

So as you can see, Twitter usage is endless and there are so many things you do to appeal to your audience. Whether it be getting news items across, updating clients on specific information or generally using it for social networking with your friends – Twitter is here and it looks like staying for a while.