Steady growth for Twitter, despite hiccups
Fans of microblogging service Twitter are apparently impervious to repeated outages and technical problems--and their enthusiasm is spreading.
Research firm Hitwise on Tuesday reported that traffic to the Twitter site increased 500 percent the week ending July 5, 2008, compared with the same period last year. That's a significant jump for a service that's continually up and down--and still lacking a clear revenue stream.
What's more, many users of the service appear to be unruffled by Twitter's technical issues. The share of returning visitors has averaged approximately 53 percent over the past four months, according to Hitwise.
Twitter also still has a leg up over its few rivals in the microblogging space. Twitter traffic last week was 12 times higher than that of Plurk and 24 times higher than FriendFeed, Hitwise says. So even though Tweeters may be getting restless, not all of them are abandoning the service in favor of similar finds.
"Despite user complaints about outages, Twitter has remained the most popular among the micro-blogging services," Hitwise said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, rumors escalated that Twitter was in the throes of buying Summize, a Twitter search engine. Neither Twitter nor Summize have commented on speculation of a possible merger.
According to Washington Post Tech Crunch, traffic at Twitter rose from .0004% of all Internet traffic in January 2008 to .0024% of all Internet traffic this month. Yes, that's ALL Internet traffic. In the entire world. And even more amazing, it happened even though Twitter experiences massive downtime on an almost daily basis. With so much of the world connected to Twitter, and with people even turning to Twitter for breaking world news, it's no wonder I continue to emphasize the benefits of Twitter to Indie Business owners.
This morning, I got an email from Indie Beauty Network member Matt Hamilton at http://www.OnlineLabels.com. Matt learned about Twitter from me during a phone call on July 3, 2008. Immediately after our conversation, Matt opened a Twitter account and started Tweeting. I signed up as his first follower, and Matt is now happily Tweeting up a storm.
Matt emailed me this morning to thank me for introducing him to Twitter, so I asked him why he likes it so much. Here's what he said.
dM: What did you think about Twitter when I first told you about it last week?
Matt: I was really unsure of it and thought it might be a waste of time, but quickly realized it to be highly addictive and really effective in my business.
dM: What good has come of your Twitter experience after just a week?
Matt: I was pleasantly surprised at how many people found my Tweets helpful and informative. My Tweets have been picked up by some fantastic blogs that are delivering free site traffic to me.
dM: Would you recommend Twitter to others and why?
Matt: Twitter has opened a whole new world of business contacts and potential customers to me. It's also a great place to learn about networking. You can pass along information to a large audience with the click of a mouse. What's not to like?
dM: What other social networking do you participate in, and how has it helped your business?
Matt: I use Myspace, Facebook and now, Twitter.
The interesting thing about Myspace and Facebook is that their networks are massive and can be cumbersome, making it sometimes difficult to connect with people directly. Twitter is great for that.
In the near future, I plan to expand my knowledge of blogging because it seems to be a highly effective way to communicate with others and gain exposure to my business.
dM: I'd like to share with people how you discovered IBN, and what's your experience been like?
Matt: I found IBN by surfing the 'Net for places to advertise. My company, OnlineLabels.com, continues to gain exposure and has become a valuable resource to many through involvement with IBN.
To all those interested, I?d highly recommend becoming a member of and an advertiser at IBN.
What do you think?
I love the picture of Matt in front of the board at his office that says, "Click. Print. Stick." That pretty much sums up how you can order labels from him easily and quickly.
Matt's current real life Twitter story speaks for itself. Twitter is easy, fun and it will expose your business to more people. Matt's only been a Tweeter for a week and he's already seen the benefits. I've been Tweeting since April, and my experience has been similar to Matt's: small investmet of time, big payoff, total fun.