FeedTwit has recently made its Twitter statistics available for free.
This is valuable information for anyone who is marketing on Twitter. From it you can time your marketing message to be most effective.
From these stats you can see that there are a couple of peaks throughout each day (all times are Eastern Time, US): Noon, 4pm, 8pm and Midnight.
These peak times seem to reflect important times of day that people check their Twitter messages.
The above example might not show this, but looking at the history will show usage peaks at Noon, Eastern time, not only shows people tweeting during lunch on the East Coast of the US but people checking their twitter accounts as they arrive at work on the West Coast. 4 pm, likewise, reflects lunch on the West Coast and potentially when people are checking their messages right before the end of the day on the East Coast.
8 pm reflects people going out for evening activities or perhaps people checking their Twitter accounts right after dinner on the East Coast. This is also right before people leave work at the end of the day on the West Coast.
Similar trends of Twitter usage show up at the peak at midnight- tweeting good night wishes on the East Coast and evening activities on the West.
The most effective time to use Twitter for marketing seems to be right before one of these peak times. If you send a tweet during the times, you risk being overwhelmed by the mass of messages that are going out. If your marketing message goes out right before one of these peaks you can get your message to your audience right as they sit down to check their Twitter account.
Just as FeedTwit is making their hourly stats available for free, so they are sharing their daily usage Twitter stats. Data like this can show Twitter marketers what day they should share their message. From FeedTwit’s history you can see that Sunday is the lowest day of the week for Twitter use and Tuesdays tend to be the days when most people tweet.