Twitter testing "number of views" stats for tweets
Some Twitter users have been reporting emails from the microblogging site updating them on the stats of their tweets. Apparently a number of them have been seeing the stats for real, on their timeline, inside or out of the iOS app version of Twitter. Unlike the Facebook stats that can be pretty in-depth for a regular user, the Twitter stats are very basic and limited to views for the particular tweet.
From an advertising point-of-view, this basic metric has little meaning since marketers rely on more sophisticated tools for measuring stats. In any case engagement and view-through are two sides of the coin and are insufficient as independent measures. All that this new statistic does is reveal how many people saw your tweet. The question now is how is this measurement arrived at?
Have people clicked on the tweet, or did they simply browse it on their timeline feed. Does hovering on the tweet account for a view? Answers to these questions are very unclear and we may not know for sure until the service is rolled out to all. What we do know is that the number of views can act as motivation or a deterrent to regular users.
The performance of tweets can work as an acid test to see how your followers are reacting to your updates. The bottom line is that for all you know this experiment may get shelved or get rolled out to everyone. Twitter is not commenting anything regarding this service for the moment; perhaps it has to focus on Turkey for now.