Twitter Inc (TWTR), LinkedIn Corp (LNKD): Here’s Why Some Net Traffic Studies May Be Wrong

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) and LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) may be social services which, according to some studies, are dwarfed in the social media traffic referral battle by the likes of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). However, marketing guru Guy Kawasaki tells Bloomberg Surveillance that some of these studies may not present the whole picture.

Kawasaki spoke about social platforms Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) and more in reaction to a graph shown by the Bloomberg Surveillance team.

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In the graph titled Facebook Drawfs Competition: % of Traffic to Websites That Comes [From] Social Media Referrals, it was shown that Facebook accounted for 22.4% of traffic referrals in 2014 while Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) and LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) accounted for 0.9% and 0.4% respectively.

That’s compared to 10.4% for Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), 1.2% for Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) and 0.7% for LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) in the preceding year. These figures are all based on the 3rd Quarter 2014 edition of the Shareaholic Social Media Traffic Report.

“I’ll tell you one thing that’s wrong with this chart. It’s showing such a decline or such a scarcity of traffic from Twitter, but many, many people use something like Tweetdeck, and so if you’re using an app to access Twitter, you don’t get counted. It’s not exactly the real world,” Kawasaki said.

Kawasaki who is considered an expert in the marketing field is admittedly using other applications to manage his active social media presence where he has over 270,000, 1.44 million, 1.47 million and 6.76 million followers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ respectively.

Daniel Benton’s Andor Capital Management is a Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) shareholder. It reported 5.75 million shares in the company by the end of the September quarter. Meanwhile, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management is a LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) shareholder. It reported owning about 3.46 million shares of the company by the end of the same period.