1. Utilization of Twitter
by the Fortune 500
Brittany Ervin

2. Rationale
✦ Neilson report shows 22.7% of American’s time
spent on social networks in June 2010
✦ Twitter is indispensable tool for brand building
and self-promotion
✦ Interested to see how the Fortune 500 are
immersing themselves in the Twitter platform

3. Related Research
✦ Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal
Study- Barnes, Ganim, Mattson
✦ Follow up study on corporate adoption of social media;
2007- 19% of Inc. 500 were blogging; 2008- 39%
✦ The Fortune 500 and Blogging: Slow and Steady-
Barnes, Ganim, Mattson
✦ Analyzed companies’ adoption of social media by
corporate blog use; found that 81% of corporations had
blogs but that rank influenced adoption. Higher
percentage than expected.

4. Methodology
✦ One social media platform: Twitter
✦ 10 randomly selected corporations: Microsoft, Hartford
Financial, The Gap, CIGNA, Qwest Communications,
Proctor and Gamble, Quest Diagnostics, Barnes and Noble,
Texas Instruments, State Farm Insurance
✦ Coded overall tweets, retweets, @reply, promotional tweets
and non-promotional tweets
✦ Promotional= any tweet/@reply promoting business/
products; Non-promotional= any tweet or @reply not
promoting business/ products
✦ Time frame: June 1, 2010-July 31, 2010

5. Research Questions
✦ 1.) How active is each company within the 2-
month time period?
✦ 2.) How many times does the company @reply?
✦ 3.) How does the company choose to publish
information? (On a promotional/non-promotional
basis)
✦ 4.) How many followers does the company have?

6. Overall Tweets Retweets @reply
Microsoft
Hartford
The Gap
CIGNA
Qwest
P&G
Quest
B&N
Texas Instruments
State Farm
0 125 250 375 500

7. Promotional Tweets Non-promotional Tweets
Microsoft
Hartford
The Gap
CIGNA
Qwest
P&G
Quest
B&N
Texas Instruments
State Farm
0 100 200 300 400

8. Followers
Microsoft
Hartford
The Gap
CIGNA
Qwest
P&G
Quest
B&N
exas Instruments
State Farm
0 37500 75000 112500 150000

9. Theory
✦ Diffusion of Innovation
✦ Rogers portrayed the spread of the innovation
adoption as an “S” curve
✦ Twitter adoption resembles the S curve
✦ Real time communication perhaps why the theory
is so relevant to Twitter platform

10. Recommendations
✦ Broaden the research and analyze a greater
number of Fortune 500 companies
✦ Extend the study beyond a two-month period
✦ Follow up with the 10 companies to see how they
have progressed