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Twitter Gaining Momentum But Still Niche
April 29, 2008
Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, has been in the news quite a bit lately (in particular for VC funding and rescuing a US blogger). This has helped drive US Internet visits up further to the increasingly popular service. Year on year, Internet visits to Twitter.com are up 8 fold. In the past three months, visits have more than doubled and traffic continues to climb, up 60% in the past month.
As the following chart illustrates, the growth has been slow and steady with an acceleration in the past few weeks.
The chart makes the growth look impressive - and it is. However, to put things into context, the site ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites. Twitter's size is notoriously difficult to measure as there are so many access points (mobile phones in particular). However, the website traffic data does give some idea of the rate of growth and also reveals that the service still hasn't reached mainstream adoption. We blogged about this last year, reaching a similar conclusion.
I looked at Hitwise clickstream data and it appears that Twitter is building on a loyal user base. The site's top sources of traffic last week were Social Networks and Forums, Email Services and Search Engines. The importance of search engine traffic has been declining over the past year. Using our new and returning visitor filter, I was able to see that 71% of visits from Search Engines are from new users compared to 33% and 38% respectively for Social Networks and Email Services. By and large, new users come from search engines whereas repeat users come from other sources. The decrease in visits from search indicates that the site is maturing - but still growing. As more and more of the user-base is made up of repeat users less and less of the traffic will come from search.
Whilst Twitter continues to be a niche website, it also continues to enjoy strong growth. Clickstream data helps us to understand that this growth is both from new users and repeat visitors. This is good news for Twitter and we'll continue to watch this site.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:42 AM
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In Categories Social Networks
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Links to weblogs that reference this entry:
- Web analytics and Twitter: An incomplete story (Software)
Hitwise released research this week reporting that Twitter had a nice relative growth spurt this year [Read More] - What's Twitter for? (Blog Watch)
Twitter is becoming more popular by the second, but there's a difference between the way Twitter thinks Twitter is used and the way it's actually used.... [Read More] - Twitter 'Bigger In UK Than US', White Van Man Taking It Mainstream? (Pocket.Info - Mobile 2.0)
And you thought it was mostly Americans addicted to the SMS/IM/web presence thingamy… ? Web measurer [Read More]
Comments
Interesting that returnign users don't use search - Normally I'd have expected people to continue usign search as a navigation tool, long after discovering a new site.
Twitter is a fantastic example of open connectivity and distribution.
Posted by Nilhan Jayasinghe | April 29, 2008 11:47 AM
this is a nice story but the graph is difficult to interpret. We wonder about Twitter use in Europe and how you were able to make sure that what you have is U.S. use only.
We explained some of our concerns and questions about your statistics here in our post:
thanks for putting this online and greetings from the Swiss mountains
Posted by WebUrs | April 30, 2008 06:12 AM
Nihan,
I should clarify - returning users do use search. We are just seeing a smaller proportion of returning users using search compared with other means of reaching the site. 70% of visits from search last week were new users. The other 30% were repeat visitors.
Heather
Posted by Heather Hopkins | April 30, 2008 07:33 AM
still.. twitter is used rather.. oddly.. you follow me right?
i mean, come on.. a person posted something on twitter that he is crapping..
Posted by allan | May 1, 2008 12:57 AM
i think this years SXSW interactive gave twitter the push it needed, i was here in Austin, and on twitter... it was how everything was organized.
Posted by steven | May 1, 2008 01:11 AM
How are they measuring traffic? Does this include my jabber connection? If I'm connected to jabber all day, is that one traffic point? Does it count my updates? My friend's updates? My tracks?
Can they compare it to usage of other chat networks? To other blog networks?
Posted by Matt | May 1, 2008 02:47 AM
Matt, About your jabber connection - what we are reporting here is website visits to Twitter.com. If you are on Jabber and never visit the Twitter website, that is not counted in these figures. I mention in the post the difficulties in getting good numbers on Twitter's size. Website visits provides a indication of growth and level of adoption but by no means paints the whole picture.
Hope that helps.
Thanks, Heather
Posted by Heather Hopkins | May 1, 2008 05:45 AM
twitter applications from their API/SMS service is really making it grow as well. twitter integration for any web service out there is becoming as important as having an API for it.
Posted by Chris | May 1, 2008 09:12 AM
Recently I have tried test marketing on Twitter with mixed results for www.BidFromTheHeart.com
The site serves as a fund raising tool for local and regional charities. I believe the heavy consumer electronics focus on the site should fit well.
I am not sure if the results are due to the low yet growing user base or add content. I am still in the expermentation stage with using Twitter but I beleive in its potential.
Posted by Chriswatson22408 | May 1, 2008 09:45 AM
I love the twitter. Great way to connect and find out what the most important parts of a person's day is. It is awesome relationship marketing tool. If you follow the right niche of people you get excellent work related info as well as forming personal connections. It is like an instant think tank when you need info.
Posted by Nicole | May 2, 2008 04:06 PM
Maybe I'm too misanthropic to appreciate Twitter, but I really can't see how it's anything more than a way for like-minded bores to share the banal details of their banal lives in the hope that someone out there gives a crap that they are currently enjoying a lovely cup of tea.
Posted by Quadrophenic | May 3, 2008 04:07 PM
Traffic to twitter.com would be people signing up for the service. Once you sign up, you update twitter via mobile phone, email, txt, etc. You receive updates much the same way (also via SOAP/XML techologies).
Thus, the increasing traffic to their site is a result of likely increased sign-ups, not increased use.
Hitwise would not be able to measure the use of Twitter, only estimate the traffic going to the site to sign up (which is increasing).
Using some calculus, Hitwise data would approximate the first derivative, i.e. the rate of growth in traffic to Twitter, as opposed to the traffic itself.
- Mark
Posted by Mark Feldman | May 6, 2008 07:04 AM
I love twitter. I met some interesting people online through that website. I can see why its becoming a target for VC funding and becoming more successful.
Keith Maven
Truth About Abs Editor
Posted by Keith Maven | October 3, 2008 01:36 AM
Can we get an update to this article with revised data and charts?
Posted by KioskGuy | February 2, 2009 10:21 PM
Hi - My colleague Heather Dougherty has posted stats on Twitter more recently here:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2009/01/twitter_catches_up_to_digg.html
Posted by Heather Hopkins | February 4, 2009 03:46 AM
So Twitter is awesome for Taking traffic to you website . It is very
simple to setup and its a fun positive way to keep in contact with
people. To get more followers on twitter check out this amazing
tool.
href="http://cb3fa4x6-40len95yhtx4f5211.hop.clickbank.net/"target="_top">Twitter
Traffic Machine
Posted by patingski | May 1, 2009 06:10 AM
I hate twitter! I really don't understand why it's so popular. But the trend will increase that's for sure.
Posted by beach volleyball | August 11, 2009 12:54 PM
i love Twitter but have found it frustrating that in order to create a relationship with the people i meet there we have to go to facebook. i don't want to connect on facebook with every person i meet online! just a couple of days ago i started using www.personavita.com because you can follow a body of work and keep groups seperated. i hope it catches on
Posted by Jason | August 22, 2009 03:39 AM
I think the point with Twitter is not how many people use it, but who uses it
I joined a few days ago at http://www.twitter.com/neerav after realising that pretty much every influential/smart person in the IT/Web industry was there including well known geek John C. Dvorak who finally joined Twitter after dissing it for ages
Posted by Neerav | April 29, 2008 08:49 AM