It wasn’t until recently that I had an epiphany about the power of social media, more specifically the power of twitter and the reach it has.
There was a lot in the media recently about the role social media would play in the Canadian election, that people couldn’t post on Facebook or Twitter until all the polls had closed right across the country or they would violate a law in Canada which was put in place in 1938 (a long time ago given the pace at which technology advances!). Whether it did played a large role I don’t know, and we may never know, but none the less social media has a huge reach.
So I started thinking about how many people a single tweet could reach if it was re-tweeted six times or went viral on a very small scale, here is what I used as my “rules” for this thought.
I have just over 1,000 followers
I assumed that each of my followers had an average of 200 followers
I assumed that each of my followers followers had an average of 100 followers
I assumed that only 3% of my followers and then after that those exposed to the tweet would re-tweet
Exposure
Tweet 1,000 people
Re-Tweet by 3% of my followers (30 people) 6,000 people
Re-Tweet by 3% of those exposed (180 people) 18,000 people
Re-Tweet by 3% of those exposed (540 people) 54,000 people
Re-tweet by 3% of those exposed (1,620 people) 162,000 people
Re-Tweet by 3% of those exposed (4,860 people) 486,000 people
Re-Tweet by 3% of those exposed (14,580 people) 1,458,000 people (1.4 million)
I know my percentages are fixed, and I made some assumptions, but I think they are conservative and this is not an exact science, it is just to show the power of social media that I had not realised before. So after a single tweet being re-tweeted six times the exposure is a minimum of 1.4 million people, it is no wonder twitter spreads news faster than conventional media can. An amazing way to spread the word about something quickly which I think we have seen with some of the recent events in the world.
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