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i'm on my iPhone now, but later I'll get here from my windows desktop. How am I counted?
People here are early adopters and many use Twitter clients, Twitter might be even more popular.
that's the power of passed links at work.
"-only 20% of its traffic comes through the Twitter website; the other 80% (logically) comes from third-party programs on smartphones or computers. So if you're looking at Twitter stats on your website, you're probably underestimating that source of traffic by a factor of five;" http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/...
this makes me wonder (if possible), should passed links have their own source (in traffic reports.) a direct visitor and a visitor via a passed link is not the same thing and marketers would love to get stats on passed links.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qpr...
So i will follow the Windows!!!!!!!!
I believe very strongly on the power of passed links, only because I could observe that in my usage pattern. My usage pattern has shifted from seeking information via web, rss etc to discovering that through my 'trusted' network. My usage of RSS reader has dropped by over 60% versus usage of twitter & fb. What twitter should do is provide every user a 'trends' info which tells me how many links I have clicked from twitter. That would be interesting to track.
The real question is.... what does all this mean for the future of the mass market OS? And, for media consumption services like google search, twitter, etc.
Does it cost 50% to acquire a Mac user compared to a PC user?
I wonder how chrome+win comparws to FF+mac?
I planned a two phase test: first phase push the same post over two different kind of systems with completely different UI (Posterous.com and Tumblr.com), second phase pushing posts targeting users from their Browser/OS preference.
Before starting the tests I verified that all posts was listed in google/yahoo/msn results. And looking at Google Analytics I realized that the user of IE preferred to visit Tumbler (74% IE users) insted Posterous (76% NO IE users and 60% NO WINOS users). OS and Browser push users to choose different UI and have feeling with different websites.
At that point I started to target posts with contents and keywords to see how users react and in that way I realized an interesting phenomena: users seems like fans! You can push away or obtain different type of users working also about their deep feeling. Working on their day by day or spare time passions or tools. Like the browser, OS and so on.
In the same way that keywords can drive traffic to your post or website it will be possible to drive traffic working on professional/personal preference in using PC stuff.
Kind Regards
Renato
For example, links sent in e-mail messages, instant messages and even twitter desktop apps would probably show up as "direct" visits even though they were passed links. But since those links generally don't appear as anchor text on a web page (many exceptions such as webmail, meebo IMs, etc.) the referrer is blank. Probably wouldn't change the numbers too much, but I see this as an area where referrer credit needs to be established, eventually.
I think the overall mentality of having a Mac makes one less hesitant to install new software. Compared with PC software, Mac software generally has less virus/trojan risk, is easier to uninstall, has less risk of a blue screen of death and won't slow your computer down as much. So even though web services generally have the same benefits/risks on the Mac as the PC, the application mentality makes trying new web services on a Mac less intimidating.
Also, my blog reading methods haven't changed since switching from PC to Mac (for 80% of my computing) a year ago. But I do feel far more comfortable trying new software / services.
Regardless, your audience clearly shows a preference for Mac (relative to general population), who show a preference for passed (vs. sought) links. Conclusion: when I'm on my Mac, it tells me what to do; when I'm on my PC, I tell it what to do.
Regardless, your audience clearly shows a preference for Mac (relative to general population), who show a preference for passed (vs. sought) links. Conclusion: when I'm on my Mac, it tells me what to do; when I'm on my PC, I tell it what to do.
Mac users will often be freelance/independent or if in a corporate with a Mac culture working within a much more flexible business environment and so have no restrictions, or ones much less draconian.
Just a theory.
Not sure whether you can draw conclusions about the average Mac or PC user. What you can say is that people who are interested in things FW is writing about use Macs..
It also shows that startups with a service aimed at "geeks"/early adopters need to make sure things work on a Mac to get initial market traction. 50%....
Thought experiment: what type of sites would be "all Windows" :-)
When I interviewed the founder of Magnify360, which helps increase conversions, he told me he could increase a landing page's overall conversion rate by showing a different page to Mac & PC users.
It's not just apple/pc or how one reads- its a whole spectrum of behaviors that seem to be based on a whole slew of things- personality and culture. So you want an in depth personality test and a cultural read of people in order to figure out their tech habits.
http://www.youjustgetme.com/ Who wants to be first? Let's see how levels of Openess concur with their tech usage and likelyhood to use a Mac or twitter with a client?
The demographics implications are pretty fascinating but I think a lot of it will need to be conjecture.
I do know that in our village Macs are virtually unknown, Windows being common-fare, and Netbooks are becoming incredibly popular - Chrome focused on the sub-laptop (ie, Netbook) market could be a very astute move indeed.
This is probably true, but it may have nothing to do with the Mac platform, or even really with the type of people. Mac people may be quicker to jump onto ANY trend. That wouldn't surprise me at all, because they tend to be younger and more image conscious. The really interesting question would be, "Do Mac users tend to jump on trendy things like Twitter MORE quickly than they generally jump on everything?" For example, I bet Mac users jumped on the iPhone bandwagon WAY faster than they did onto the twitter bandwagon. That difference (difference in adoption rate of iPhone vs. twitter BY mac-heads) is actually the more interesting thing to look at.
Did you happen to get stats for other operating systems as well? I'm wondering where the Linux visits were coming from, if there were any.
The above is as true as your statement. Don't say 'Windows users this' or 'Mac users that'. Generalisations are pointless when you are looking at a statistical sample. Instead: 'a greater proportion of Mac users are early adopters'. It may well be that the majority of early adopters are Windows users, but you aren't looking at it that way, and you could easily mislead.
You ask if twitter's users are more Mac than Windows, but 23.5k is via Mac+twitter, and 24.4k is PC+twitter. So, yes they are more even than usual, but twitter is probably still a majority PC crowd.
Sorry to be a stats Nazi, greatly enjoying the blog.
One thing that could be interesting to see is what proportion of readers read at work (as I'm doing) or at home. The vast majority of business machines are PCs, so you may find that you have an even higher proportion of Macheads than you think, just that they prefer to read at work. Me? I'm a Linux, but work machines are all Windows.