The absolute first thought that i had when i thought about this topics was, is it something that i need to even think about. The resounding answer that i got is yes. There are quite a lot of sites offering twitter statistics. Which really to me means that whether it is needed or not, there are people that want to offer these services and that really comes back around to the point that there are people that will use these services.
For my part i generally do not use them as often as i use to. There really are only three stats that matter to me, and they are all displayed every time i log into twitter. The first is how many people i follow. The second how many are following me. And the third is how many updates i have posted. In my opinion some of the other tools are possibly a little irrelevant, and possibly go to far towards over analyzing a system that is really quite simple.
There are really only three sites that i have used to view much if anything of stats on twitter. These sites can occasionally provide me with a little insight into how i am using twitter. But they far from guide anything much of how i use it on a daily basis.
1. Twitter counter (www.twittercounter.com) – A fairly straight forward site, which basically gives you a chart of how your follower count has changed over time. There are three settings, 7 days, 1 month and 3 months. The biggest thing that you can use this to track is how what you do affects the number of people following you.
2. Twitalyzer (www.twitalyzer.com) – The Twitalyzer website takes into account your activity over the past seven days, as well as using previous data, to create scores in 5 different categories and show trends on how you are using twitter, and how often others may connect with you. You can gain some insight into how often other Re-Tweet your tweets or how often you are referenced.
3. TweetStats (www.tweetstats.com) – This site is possibly the most useful stats though, it is a very simple layout giving just seven clear graphs that layout your twitter usage in seven ways. The first how many tweets you send each month, followed by a density chart of the most frequent times your tweet. Next charts of your tweets aggregated over both days of the week and hours of the day. Finally the last three charts are who you send @ replies to most often, the method you use for sending tweets and finally the total ReTweets you make and to who.
While i don’t see the point in checking your statistics multiple times per day or even on a daily basis, there are occasionally some good points that you can pick up from having a look every once in a while. I would say that all it takes is really a matter of 10-15 minutes a week to take a look at stats, you will quickly find which ones are important and focus on them. Any more often then a weekly basis and you are probably losing time you could be doing something else.