Twitterfacts - First state of the Twitosphere in Scandinavia : Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland

Over the last months I published posts where the state of the Twitosphere in different European countries was analyzed : Belgium (April 17, 2007), the Netherlands (April 22, 2007), Italy (May 7, 2007), Spain (May 18, 2007) and Ireland (June 23, 2007).

This time I analyzed the state of the Twitosphere in 4 Scandinavian countries : Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. A photo was taken of the Twitosphpere in these four countries at the same time, which makes it easy for comparison.

Sweden is the country with the largest population, almost twice as much as in the other three countries. I have listed in the table below for each country the number of active Twitter accounties I was able to find, the population according to Wikipedia and the number of people per Twitter account. Sweden, the biggest country, has proportionally the highest number of Twitter accounts. Finland has the lowest density of Twitter accounts, which can perhaps be caused by the fact that Jaiku, an alternative for Twitter, was developed in Finland. The first Twitter users in all Scandinavian countries appeared almost a year ago, between mid July 2006 and end August 2006. The oldest accounts for each country are listed below.

	Denmark	Finland	Norway	Sweden
number of Twitter accounts	307	187	238	670
population (million)	5,4	5,2	4,6	9,1
number of inhabitants per Twitter account	17.590	27.807	19.328	13.582
date of first Twitter message	July 19, 2006	August 14, 2006	August 30, 2006	July 31, 2006

Oldest Twitter accounts from Denmark
http://twitter.com/peme - Per Meldgaard - first message on 19/07/2006
http://twitter.com/boetter - Jacob Bøtter - first message on 21/09/2006
http://twitter.com/Svanes - Christian Sv Kolding - first message on 23/09/2006
http://twitter.com/ML - Morten Lund - first message on 25/09/2006
http://twitter.com/balslev - Jesper - first message on 28/09/2006

Oldest Twitter accounts from Finland
http://twitter.com/dw - dw - first message on 14/08/2006
http://twitter.com/Jaakko - juicyburger - first message on 22/08/2006
http://twitter.com/nette - nette - first message on 11/09/2006
http://twitter.com/jyri - Jyri Engeström - first message on 26/09/2006
http://twitter.com/olli404 - Olli 404 - first message on 26/10/2006

Oldest Twitter accounts from Norway
http://twitter.com/Elisabeth - Elisabeth - first message on 30/08/2006
http://twitter.com/asgeirn - Asgeir S. Nilsen - first message on 3/09/2006
http://twitter.com/larskflem - larskflem - first message on 7/11/2006
http://twitter.com/einar - Benjamin Jacobsen - first message on 9/11/2006
http://twitter.com/oyvind - Oyvind Solstad - first message on 17/11/2006

Oldest Twitter accounts from Sweden
http://twitter.com/alexanderljung - Alexander Ljung - first message on 31/07/2006
http://twitter.com/moonhouse - David Hall - first message on 4/09/2006
http://twitter.com/plindberg - Peter Lindberg - first message on 4/09/2006
http://twitter.com/Jonas_Blind_Hen - Jonas - first message on 6/09/2006
http://twitter.com/Johan - Johan - first message on 8/09/2006


History of the Twitter accounts
This first graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts in the 4 countries. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. Please be careful with your analysis of the graphs, the scale for Sweden goes to 600, the scale for the other three graphs goes only to 300. The second graph shows the same information, but on the same plot. From the start until December 2006, the number of Twitter accounts in the 4 countries was about the same. From April 2007 the number of Twitter accounts in Sweden, the largest country, accelerated stronger than in the 3 other countries.




Public of Private
A Twitter user can indicate in his profile that his Twitter messages are only visible to their friends. The percentage of private Twitter accounts varies from 6% (Finland) over 7% (Norway) to 8% (Norway and Sweden). These percentage have to be compared to 22% for Belgium, 9,5% for the Netherlands, 8,3% for Spain and 3,5% for Italy.

	Denmark	Finland	Norway	Sweden
Private Twitter accounts	26	12	17	54
Percentage Private accounts	8%	6%	7%	8%

Number of friends

	Denmark	Finland	Norway	Sweden
Percentage Twitter users without friends	27%	32%	42%	32%
Average number of friends	8,61	4,95	8,55	4,08
Highest number of friends	305	57	595	73

The average number of friends in the 4 countries (between 4 and 9) is rather low compared to the average number of friends in the previously analyzed countries : 8,8 for Ireland, 9,6 for Belgium, 13,5 for the Netherlands, 15,8 for Spain and finally 32 for Italy. As the analysis for some of these countries was performed more than a month ago, these values have probably increased by now.



Top 5 for Denmark
http://twitter.com/dltq - Raymond - 305 friends
http://twitter.com/NickWilson - Nick Wilson - 178 friends
http://twitter.com/SPAMfighter - SPAMfighter - 93 friends
http://twitter.com/haugstrup - Andreas Haugstrup Pe - 66 friends
http://twitter.com/Heilemann - Heilemann - 62 friends

Top 5 for Finland
http://twitter.com/wxhelsinki - Helsinki Weather - 57 friends
http://twitter.com/vascellari - Andrea Vascellari - 52 friends
http://twitter.com/jatta - so much about myself - 34 friends
http://twitter.com/jarkko - Jarkko Laine - 26 friends
http://twitter.com/msameer - Mohammed Sameer - 26 friends

Top 5 for Norway
http://twitter.com/ap1978 - Anders Pedersen - 595 friends
http://twitter.com/oyvind - Oyvind Solstad - 100 friends
http://twitter.com/clq - Christian L. Quale - 99 friends
http://twitter.com/arnor - Twisted Intellect - 87 friends
http://twitter.com/skyelemmon - Skye Lemmon - 57 friends

Top 5 for Sweden
http://twitter.com/rogerjohansson - Roger Johansson - 73 friends
http://twitter.com/Johan - Johan - 69 friends
http://twitter.com/aragszxki - baki cakici - 56 friends
http://twitter.com/dreamlandind - Per S - 52 friends
http://twitter.com/dangli - Daniel Glifberg - 46 friends


Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as friend and receives all updates of that other Twitter account.

	Denmark	Finland	Norway	Sweden
Percentage Twitter users without followers	31%	32%	42%	34%
Average number of followers	9,33	5,78	6,76	5
Highest number of followers	233	70	269	247

Top 5 for Denmark
http://twitter.com/NickWilson - Nick Wilson - 233 followers
http://twitter.com/Heilemann - Heilemann - 181 followers
http://twitter.com/dltq - Raymond - 171 followers
http://twitter.com/JonasRask - Jonas Rask - 138 followers
http://twitter.com/haugstrup - Andreas Haugstrup Pe - 75 followers

Top 5 for Finland
http://twitter.com/jyri - Jyri Engeström - 70 followers
http://twitter.com/alc990 - andi - 50 followers
http://twitter.com/ernesto_jimenez - Ernesto Jiménez - 44 followers
http://twitter.com/jaro - Jaro - 29 followers
http://twitter.com/msameer - Mohammed Sameer - 30 followers

Top 5 for Norway
http://twitter.com/ap1978 - Anders Pedersen - 269 followers
http://twitter.com/clq - Christian L. Quale - 63 followers
http://twitter.com/jillaroo - Jill Walker - 57 followers
http://twitter.com/skyelemmon - Skye Lemmon - 51 followers
http://twitter.com/Elisabeth - Elisabeth - 47 followers

Top 5 for Sweden
http://twitter.com/Trendio - Trendio - 247 followers
http://twitter.com/aziz - Aziz Ashofté - 77 followers
http://twitter.com/rogerjohansson - Roger Johansson - 77 followers
http://twitter.com/Johan - Johan - 68 followers
http://twitter.com/aragszxki - baki cakici - 67 followers


Updates
Twitter users can publish messages to let their friends and perhaps everyone else if their account is public knwo what they are doing. A Twitter message is also called an update (or a Tweet).

	Denmark	Finland	Norway	Sweden
Percentage Twitter users without updates	6%	7%	3%	3%
Average number of updates	55,79	50,21	45,18	48,3
Highest number of updates	1749	636	919	1098

The average number of updates in the 4 countries (between 5 and 10) is again rather low compared to the average number of followers in the previously analyzed countries : 72 for Belgium, 83 for Ireland, 88 for the Netherlands, 106 for Spain and finally 106 for Italy.As the analysis for some of these countries was performed more than a month ago, these values have probably increased by now. In the other countries I found several Twitter accounts for which the Twitter messages were automatically generated (by so called Twitter bots). These Twitter bots seem to be missing in the 4 countries.

Top 5 for Denmark
http://twitter.com/NickWilson - Nick Wilson - 1749 updates
http://twitter.com/NielsChristian - Niels Christian - 1196 updates
http://twitter.com/jdbauer - Jonathan David Bauer - 1023 updates
http://twitter.com/dltq - Raymond - 742 updates
http://twitter.com/gunnarhafdal - Gunnar Hafdal - 437 updates

Top 5 for Finland
http://twitter.com/dw - dw - 636 updates
http://twitter.com/ernesto_jimenez - Ernesto Jiménez - 565 updates
http://twitter.com/adelate - Noora - 416 updates
http://twitter.com/anamorphic - Joe - 407 updates
http://twitter.com/arabella - arabella - 355 updates

Top 5 for Norway
http://twitter.com/ap1978 - Anders Pedersen - 919 updates
http://twitter.com/marcusramberg - Marcus Ramberg - 474 updates
http://twitter.com/arnor - Twisted Intellect - 446 updates
http://twitter.com/Timo - Timo - 354 updates
http://twitter.com/unclr - rogrrr - 354 updates

Top 5 for Sweden
http://twitter.com/svartling - stefan svartling - 1098 updates
http://twitter.com/dreamlandind - Per S - 802 updates
http://twitter.com/aragszxki - baki cakici - 705 updates
http://twitter.com/pivic - Niklas Pivic - 628 updates
http://twitter.com/skamuel - Samuel Linde - 594 updates

Degree of activity

	Denmark	Finland	Norway	Sweden
Twitter accounts with no update in the last 20 days	57%	53%	59%	59%
Twitter accounts with an update in the last 7 days	27%	32%	21%	28%

More than half of the Twitter users in the 4 countries did not post an update in the last 20 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts. In Finland only one third of the Twitter users did post an update in the last 7 days. For Norway this was only a little bit more than one fifth of the Twitter users.


Conclusion
This state of the Twitosphere is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (friends/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

The metrics used to characterize the Twitosphere in the 4 Scandinavian countries produces rather similar values for the 4 countries. The values observed for the Scandinavian countries are however different from the previously analyzed countries.

The Twitosphere in the 4 considered Scandinavian countries is still growing. The history graphs above show that there are still new Twitter accounts being created. On the other hand only between 21% (Norway) and 32% (Finland) of the Twitter users with a public profiel did post at least one Twitter message during the last 7 days. Twitter accounts in the 4 countries have less friends and less followers compared to Twitter users from Italy and Spain. Perhaps the critical mass to make a Twitter (sub) community succesful is not reached in the Scandinavian countries. Or can the low networking indicators be explained by cultural factors ? Are Scandinavians more reserved compared to people from the south of Europe ?