Hitwise launched analysis of Twitter this week, revealing some interesting points including one out of every 350 website visits in the U.K. comes from Twitter, that barely 5% of Twitter users go to online retail service websites from Twitter and that 93% of Twitter’s growth has been achieved over the last 6 months.

This low e-commerce referral activity, I would presume is due to the fact that most profiles linking to ecommerce sites would be the brands looking to be purchased. The only independent feedback would have to be from followers of the profile, which would mean that most independent Tweets would be positive. With the expectation of so much positive sentiment about the brand, it’s no wonder that users aren’t inspired to purchase from Twitter, but would more than likely use at some point during research.

The IAB published their internet advertising spend findings for the second half of 2008 this morning.

The research showed that entertainment and media over took the usual suspects in terms of advertising spend, making up 16.3% of £3.3 billion spent in the second half of 2008. Importantly retail saw a significant growth in the second half of the year from 6.3% to 9.1%, most probably due to the Christmas period, but still great to see this level of investment.

Click on the link below to see all the findings:

http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/2008internetadvertisingspend010409.html

A study by Netpop has shown that social networkers are much more likely to shop and spend more online than users that don’t engage with their social network.

The study showed that social networkers bought a number of products and services online, spending on average of $101 per month. Non-contributors to social networks spent about 20% less per month.

Social networking has grown 93% since 2006 , with 76% of US broadband users actively contributing  to the web via social media.