Power In Numbers?

--- David Banks, Professor of the Practice of Statistics, Duke University
(Vibe, Fall/Winter 2009 pg. 26; Vibe.com; *The New Vibe Maganzine)

"There's a negative relationship between the first week sales and the volume of tweets sent per day. So the more you tweet, the less you sell. My personal guess is that the relationship remains negative [as total sales increase]. But if we remove Maxwell, it looks like the line would have a positive trend. The reversals between Jordin Sparks apparently being the youngest, tweeting the most and selling the least, and Maxwell being the eldest, tweeting the least but selling the most, is an interesting aspect. They can possible be viewed as outliers since they're so far from the pattern of other artists. One explanation is that established artists sell a lot and they don't feel the need to tweet in order to boost their fan club. Even though sending a lot ot tweets is associated with lower sales, it may very well be a good strategy to build up visibility and gain more fans. If we look at the same people five years forward, we could perhaps find that Jordin Sparks is at the top of the heap."


Translation: Tweeting your morning routine to @randomfan doesn't send more consumers to the registers. - Tracy Garraud