December 19, 2012
As yesterday’s blog post shows, social media continues to radically transform the ways traditional journalism operates across the world. We learnt that some of year’s biggest stories broke via Twitter, not printed press. And traditional journalism will either transform, or die.
An unanswered question remains though – how are UK’s newspapers navigating the uncharted territory of social media? Here’s a quick glance at the performance of six popular newspapers on Twitter – the hub of world’s instantaneous conversation.
The total number of followers and tweets is a good indicator of the user’s aggregate activity. Financial Times and the Telegraph are clear leaders in this category.
Number of Followers
| @FinancialTimes | 1017671 |
| @Guardian | 720,638 |
| @TheSunNewspaper | 205968 |
| @Telegraph | 158859 |
| @Independent | 146256 |
| @TheTimes | 52111 |
Total number of Tweets
| @Telegraph | 155510 |
| @TheTimes | 66905 |
| @Independent | 43619 |
| @FinancialTimes | 30253 |
| @Guardian | 23029 |
| @TheSunNewspaper | 15078 |
Seeing who joined Twitter first is another way to measure adaptability. Interestingly, Financial Times was the quickest to join the Twitterverse back in 2007.
Who joined first?
| @FinancialTimes | 16-Apr-07 |
| @TheTimes | 17-May-07 |
| @Telegraph | 18-Sep-08 |
| @Independent | 26-Oct-08 |
| @TheSunNewspaper | 23-Apr-09 |
| @Guardian | 05-Nov-09 |
Nevertheless, the quality of content is more important than quantity. Engagement rate can be measured by the relative number of retweets or replies. In these categories The Sun and the Guardian are clear leaders.
Number of Retweets per 100 tweets
| @TheSunNewspaper | 3083 |
| @Guardian | 1656 |
| @Independent | 1402 |
| @FinancialTimes | 394 |
| @Telegraph | 314 |
| @TheTimes | 137 |
Number of Replies per 100 tweets
| @Guardian | 196 |
| @TheSunNewspaper | 123 |
| @FinancialTimes | 41 |
| @Independent | 29 |
| @Telegraph | 14 |
| @TheTimes | 8 |
And what kind of content do these newspapers post? Here are the most retweeted posts for each newspaper:
Data sources:
twitter.com
mytoptweet.com
whendidyoujointwitter.com
twtrland.com