A report by Mashable that walks through data researched by Barracuda Networks Labs speaks volumes on what I call a new class of web user.  The fanatic, engaged early adopter.

We (SiliconAngle labs) were storing and analyzing twitter up until July 2009 until the project moved over to Bing. The reported data from Mashable is pretty much on the money.

Mashable reports:

Barracuda Labs also analyzed Twitter’s growth over time, and the numbers are consistent with previous reports that show while Twitter grew like wildfire in early 2009, it has dramatically slowed down in recent months. Going back further to early 2008, the report estimates that the microblogging tool grew by just 0.31%. However, with the quick rise of media coverage and the influx of celebrities such as Oprah and Shaq, Twitter use grew by 20% in April 2009 before dropping off to 0.34% growth in December 2009.

While the news isn’t stellar, it isn’t all bad for Twitter () — these metrics are moving in the right direction. A full 79% of users had less than 10 tweets in June 2009, but that number dropped to 73% by December. Eighty percent of users had less than 10 followers in June 2009, but that percentage dropped to 74% by December. If that trend continues, you’ll hopefully see a more diverse and active Twitterverse going forward.

My Angle On Twitter Data – It’s Not About Monitoring But Action and Influence

Since July we moved on from that project of crawling Twitter.   Now we are prototyping a monitoring methodology that looks at interaction data on Twitter and the results from that project is very telling.  I’ve said before Twitter is not for the mainstream users, but instead it’s for a new class of user or active users.

The Twitter user data speaks to the behavior of those new users.  The Twitter user base seems to follow the classic 80/20 rule in terms of activity driving value – 20% of the user provide 80% of the value.  That being said the search and discovery value of twitter is valuable to the mainstream user.  This is why the overall Comscore Twitter user numbers are different than Twitter’s registered user numbers.  Most users are generally lazy and want things done for them.  That is why users browse and search Twitter data.  Active Twitter users are "proxies" for lazy mainstream users which is pretty much everyone.

Mainstream people are trying to figure out the value of Twitter.  Twitter’s value is in the resulting data from interactions of these early adopters or "proxies" that drive "action" within distinct user groups.  Action is the result of the engagement data or interaction data among users.  These results cause users to take an action on something.  Action meaning avoid, ignore, comment, retweet, buy, sell, share, and/or some other thing that is important for the user.  Although Twitter is noisy, there is big time signal in those tweets.

Twitter rewards real time interaction and curation which translates into discovery which tranlates into loyalty.  So even though not everyone tweets everyone can benefit from the select that are tweeting.  The 80/20 rule applies.  This is a marketplace developing and it’s untapped.

Twitter Is One Big Ant Colony

The classic saying goes an ant by itself is weak but a colony of ants can do great things.  I’ve always said Twitter is like one "big ant colony" – in that there is lots of signaling (among ants).  By themselves the signals (tweets) look noisy and irrelevant, but when taking those tweets in context to a distinct user group (ant colony) in aggregation these self formed groups can move mountains from changing government and helping earthquake victims to unearthing bad products and services.

This new class of user is disrupting the marketplace.

This is an opportunity for brands and services to target this new class of user can achieve new market share and positions.  It’s social media.  Harnessing the signal from the noise is one of the biggest opportunities on the web today.  This translates to social networks, cloud, and mobile.  Its about the users, interactions, and action.

I’ve blogged recently out my mobile innovation cycle and that same model applies here with social data.  It’s about the interaction data and what that enables.

Bottom Line: With the always on connected Internet early adopters and influential users have more power than ever before.  What’s even more exciting is that the notion of influence is changing.  The Internet, social networks, Twitter, Facebook, and social media have globalized and opened up influence to the masses.