Twitter on the Decline? Nah.
Throughout April and May, the amount of publicity that Twitter received in mainstream media sky-rocketed. It was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine, for one. And not to mention it seemed like half of Hollywood had signed up for their own account - most notably, Oprah (who hasn’t tweeted since the beginning of June, by the way). I wrote about Hollywood’s use of Twitter back in April, but now the media has been telling a slightly different story - Twitter is leveling off?
I’ve seen multiple blog posts chronicling the decent of Twitter and citing various stats. According to Quantcast, for example, US Twitter usage has gone down from 24.4 million to 21.9 million since May. And HubSpot recently released their annual “State of the Twittersphere” report, which led to a number of blog posts calling attention to the figures of almost 55% of users have never tweeted before and 53% of users don’t have any followers.
But, Twitter (and the community) is still going strong. Looking at the “big picture,” comparing May 2008 to May 2009, Nielsen found in a recent study that Twitter has actually seen the largest gain in total new users compared to other social networks - a 1,448% increase! In addition, Nielsen found that people have actually been spending more time on the site, particularly in recent months - great news for the community!
The recent celebrity-related traffic spike to Twitter traffic most likely consisted of users hopping onto the site and leaving just as soon as they started. We’re better off without them! Now that the “curious” have dropped out, we’re left with a dedicated group of users that are actually interested in starting and participating in conversations - getting back to the basics of Twitter. And, for brands, whether or not there are humongous spikes in the numbers of visitors to Twitter.com matters much less than whether relevant conversations about their category (or the brand, itself) exists in the Twittersphere.
What’s the moral of the story? Its quality, not quantity, that counts when it comes to Twitter!
It seems that so many new users are hearing the “Twitter buzz” and signing up just to check it out, without any real intentions of using it to build/keep relationships. That leaves Twitter with tons of users who have no followers and who have never tweeted. This tool is really changing the way people communicate, meet and network professionally. It should really take off once people start to realize its value.
I saw recent stats that said just over 50% of Twitter accounts have never made the first Tweet.
That said, Facebook seems to be in a rush to become more Twitter-like, and Google is working hard to offer realtime search as a reaction to Twitter. If Google thinks Twitter is important to adapt for, I’m not the one to argue with them. I’m planning on Twitter being around for a while.
Thanks for the comments, Jen and Brian. It is true that many sites are looking towards Twitter when it comes to adding new features or further developing their own services. And, just like with anything “new” online, there is always going to be those folks who just sign-on to check it out and then never return - and there is no exception with Twitter.