A new Associated Press-CNBC
poll reflects skepticism about Twitter’s IPO prospects. The poll was conducted by telephone in late October among roughly 1,000 US adults. (It’s unclear whether the poll included mobile users and thus how representative it is.)
While most people believe that Twitter will be “successful” and continue to be around in five years, only 36 percent of respondents said that Twitter would be a good investment, while 47 percent disagreed. The remainder didn’t know.
How likely is it that each of the following will be successful in five years?
Do you think that buying Twitter shares now would be a good investment?
Most individual investors won’t get a direct crack at the IPO. It will be mainly large funds and institutional investors. So whether or not the public at large believes Twitter is a good investment is irrelevant in a way.
Below are a few other findings, which can be spun in positive or negative ways depending on your point of view on Twitter:
20 percent said that they had Twitter accounts
24 percent of that group used Twitter at least once a day; however 29 percent of that group said they “never” used their accounts
42 percent of Twitter users (broadly defined) “noticed ads”
31 percent of Twitter users (broadly defined) clicked on ads
One could argue that “only 20 percent” of the public uses Twitter or that the remaining 80 percent represents a huge growth opportunity — and so on. The one statistic that struck me was the 29 percent of Twitter account holders who said they “never” used the site.
AP asked about “favorable” vs. “unfavorable” views of the major social media sites (like a political poll). A minority (19 percent) said they held a favorable view of Twitter. Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn fared better.
Please tell me if you have a favorable, unfavorable or neither favorable nor unfavorable impression of . . . ?
Twitter has raised its IPO target offering price to between $23 and $25 reports the LA Times. Indeed, according to Reuters, Twitter is seeing strong demand for its IPO among investors. That’s why the company is raising its IPO pricing.
Postscript: Pew says (based on survey of 5,000 US adults) that 16 percent of US adults use Twitter.
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