growth

A good clue to Twitter’s growth rates

August 4, 2009 By Dan Thornton

Although comScore only measures visits to Twitter.com, and more than half of Twitter users use clients and apps, it does provide a clue to Twitter’s growth rates.

In June it gained around 7 million new visitors, hitting 44.5 million unique global visitors, up 19 per cent from May 2009, and now making it the 52nd biggest site in the world (and with a 55 per cent international audience).

Techcrunch points to the Iran election as a contributor to the growth, while Mark Evans over at Twitterati somewhat confusingly uses comScore and Compete figures to calculate a 50-50 U.S and International split.

For the record, the biggest properties measured by comScore are Google sites, Microsoft sites, Yahoo sites, Facebook and Wikimedia Foundation sites.

Twitter growth, Twestival, Phillip Schofield and Steven Fry

January 21, 2009 By Dan Thornton

A bit of a microblogging round-up.

There’s been a bit of discussion about the Hitwise findings released by Heather Dougherty, that claim Twitter traffic surpassed Digg for the first time. OK, when I say discussion, it’s the normal coincidence of Techcrunch and ReadWriteWeb both jumping to analyse the same topic when it appears. (Having almost identical headlines didn’t help!).

And in the UK, it’s grown by 974% in 12 months! It’s now the 291st most-viewed website in the UK – with fastest growth among 35-44 year olds.
Apparently European CEO’s might not get Twitter, but it’s users do – as shown by the amazing growth of Twestival, which has grown from a group of London-based Twitter users getting together, along with some gatherings in places like Toronto and Vancouver. The next one, on February 12, will now have 100+ cities around the world hosting events in aid of charity:water. And the first release of London tickets sold out in a couple of hours.

Stephen Fry is a British celebrity and icon, and to celebrate 50,000 following @stephenfry he’s set quite a challenge, which has definitely hit UK productivity today! (Via thatcanadiangirl). Entry is by submitting the best tweet using 50 letter Ls.

And speaking about celebs, one of the most mainstream TV hosts in the UK, Phillip Schofield, is not just on Twitter (@schofe), but verified himself by referring to Twitter live on the mid-morning chat show This Morning. (via PaidContent: UK). While I wouldn’t credit the host of This Morning and Dancing on Ice as the sole tipping point for Twitter becoming mainstream, it’s another big push of added momentum.

Tesco arrives on Twitter – kind of…

January 19, 2009 By Dan Thornton

It appears that Tesco-owned U.S food chain Fresh & Easy has a twitter profile (as reported by Brand Republic).

Aside from the fact it might stop brands using & in their name to enable them to register on new sites more easily, it also shows Twitter is gaining more and more validity as a customer service and communication channel.

As the Brand Republic article notes – it’s interesting that U.S. mainstream companies are starting to jump on Twitter, but UK firms are being pretty reluctant – Tesco doesn’t have an account for example.

And yet:

‘UK Internet visits to www.twitter.com have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America.’ (From Robin Goad at Hitwise).

So why are UK firms (that aren’t in the tech space) more reluctant to jump on Twitter than their U.S counterparts? Anyone got any suggestions?

Twitter rocketing in numbers…

October 23, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Found via Twittermaven is the news that Twitter is the fastest growing social networking site, according to Nielsen Online. Traffic has grown by 343%, from 533K to 2.3M in the space of 12 months!

More worrying is the fact that a site I don’t like for previous spamming-type techniques, Tagged, is second. It’s followed by Ning, Linkedin and Last.fm. Largest on the list is Facebook at 39M, but all the top ten are witnessing above 57% growth year-on-year!

There’s still room for blogs to grow….

May 29, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’ve just spotted some research by Emarketer on US blog readership which shows that, despite the justified excitement and uptake of Twitter et al, blog readership is set to grow from 94.1 million readers in 2007 to 145.3 million in 2012. That figure is people reading a blog at least once a month.

Whether or not that’s totally correct, what’s interesting for me is that the 94.1million in 2007 is 50% of U.S. internet users. So 50% of internet users in 2007 didn’t read a blog once a month in that year. Is this because they didn’t know about them? Didn’t care about them? Didn’t trust them? Need them?
Definitely shows there’s still room for growth in the blog world, with blog advertising predicted to more than double by 2012.
Get more details, and the option to obtain the full report from eMarketer.