Breaking News

Twitter

We encourage all of you who use Twitter to follow us either through @scotusblogposts (which links to all our posts) or @scotusblog (which is a curated account where we publish original content).  We often publish breaking news and summaries of the day’s events through Twitter on @scotusblog a little before they appear on the blog.  We do that because Twitter entries are quick and easy and it is a “push” technology: the entries appear immediately in readers’ feeds.  And @scotusblog has 85,000 followers, so it is a very efficient way to distribute news.

For those interested in how Twitter has worked for us, as of a couple of years ago both @scotusblog and @scotusblogposts had roughly 2000 followers.  Now, @scotusblogposts still has only 2500.  @scotusblog is around thirty-five times more popular.  Readers seem to value much more the curated, original content on @scotusblog. 

In terms of a comparison with the blog’s general readership, we can use Monday through Wednesday of this week as a point of comparison.  Those were interesting days at the Court, with important arguments, plus the significant Kiobel decision yesterday.  But they were far from the most significant cases.  On each of those three days, we had 40,000-50,000 visits and 80,000-90,000 page views.  My best estimate is that there were roughly 25,000 unique readers each day.  Roughly another 15,000 people consume the blog’s content through RSS or emails.  So by publishing on @scotusblog we can reach more people immediately (85,000 followers) than read the blog during the day.  (Obviously, there is an overlap between the two sets of readers, but the basic point is valid.)

Recommended Citation: Tom Goldstein, Twitter, SCOTUSblog (Apr. 18, 2013, 3:36 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2013/04/twitter/