By D. Bruce Johnston, President, DBJ Associates

Twitter’s $1 Billion valuation has definitely stolen the spotlight over the past few weeks.

According to a recently released Twitter users study by Crowd Science among other findings:

• 11% of Twitter users admitted to accessing social media while driving during the preceding 30 days, compared with just 5% of other social media users
• 29% of Twitter users said they had accessed social media from cars at some point in the past, compared with 13% of non-users
• Twice as many Twitter users as non-Twitter social media users (8% to 4%) had accessed any social media from a theater during a movie or live performance
• 17% of Twitter users vs. 12% of non-Twitter social media users had accessed social media from a washroom or toilet

And, according to the Houston Chronicle, there are those that have profited.  They reported The University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) booked an increase of $3.1 billion from the end of March until Aug. 31.  UTIMCO officials credit the bounce to improved stock markets and its investment in the social networking phenomenon Twitter.  Twitter’s valuation of $1 billion last week will add an estimated $30 million to UTIMCO’s balance sheet at the end of the next quarter.

Interesting statistics and profit results but hardly enough to add up to a $ BILLION!

How did Twitter garner a $1 Billion valuation?

I’ll leave that explanation to Robert J. Moore, the CEO and co-founder of RJMetrics, an on-demand database analytics and business intelligence startup that helps online businesses measure, manage, and monetize better.

In a TechCrunch post he provided the following analysis of the valuation.

A few weeks ago, my former employer led a $100 million investment into Twitter and I must admit that I was quite jealous of my former colleagues. Chances are they got the opportunity to do some very cool analytics on Twitter’s data.

Rather than wonder about what I missed, I decided to figure out what I could from the outside looking in. Using some statistical trickery, the Twitter API, and my RJMetrics dashboard, I uncovered a ton of astonishing new information about Twitter. Here are some highlights:

• Twitter’s user growth is no longer accelerating. The rate of new user acquisition has plateaued at around 8 million per month.
• Over 14% of users don’t have a single follower, and over 75% of users have 10 or fewer followers.
• 38% of users have never sent a single tweet, and over 75% of users have sent fewer than 10 tweets.
• 1 in 4 registered users tweets in any given month.
• Once a user has tweeted once, there is a 65% chance that they will tweet again. After that second tweet, however, the chance of a third tweet goes up to 81%.
• If someone is still tweeting in their second week as a user, it is extremely likely that they will remain on Twitter as a long-term user.
• Users who joined in more recent months are less likely to stop using the service and more likely to tweet more often than users from the past.

Read on for some detailed charts and a deeper dive into the data.