If it seems like Twitter is growing faster and faster each day, that is because it is. ComScore has released its March numbers for the U.S., and it estimates that unique visitors to Twitter.com grew 131 percent between February and March to 9.3 million visitors. No wonder Twitter is more popular than Britney.
Not only did Twitter more than double the number of people that go to its site in a single month, but it accelerated its growth from the 55 percent rate it experienced in February. These numbers do not include international visitors, nor do they include all the usage on desktop and mobile clients, which is significant in Twitter’s case. But it is a useful proxy.
So to just to give a sense of the type of growth Twitter is going through, here is the month-to-month growth in U.S. unique visitors so far this year:
March, 2009: 131%
February, 2009: 55%
January, 2009: 33%
In February, comScore estimated that Twitter.com had worldwide 9.8 million visitors worldwide and 4 million U.S. visitors. If that 41 percent ratio of U.S. visitors to total worldwide visitors still holds (in January it was about the same), it would mean that Twitter.com attracted more than 20 million unique visitors worldwide. ComScore releases international figures later in the month.
This isn’t really a surprise to anyone is it?
Anyway, Twitter is going to take 37 years to catch up to Facebook
http://techcrun...witter-growing/
That doesn’t make sense. If Twitter has 10M active users, 100% monthly growth would imply ~4.5 months to match facebook’s 200M. Predicting using static rates of growth will underestimate growth for a “hockey stick growth” company like Twitter.
Of course, predicting 100% monthly growth sustained over 5 months is ridiculous.
More importantly, as is often pointed out by people that aren’t bloggers looking to cover a horse race, Facebook and Twitter aren’t mutually exclusive from a user’s perspective. I use both actively.
Ya, I do agree with you. But simple mathematics does show it as 37 years, though realistically we see that it is flawed logic..
@Anand: Do you understand the concept of exponential growth?
It should be good alarm for “dont care anybody” facebook. Also this twitter hits Google reader, as all news/blogs offer twitter stream?
Anything to do with HTML title tweak, for SEO juice???
Aaron
Yes, I do..that’s why I said it is flawed logic..
Anyone have a clue how much desktop & mobile account for?
Quote Mike Arrington in March:
“And enough people are hooked on it that Twitter has reached critical mass”
Then it’s time to build a Twitter clone and enjoy part of that success
.
Laconica can help: http://www.myte...re-version-073/
I’m joking, of course…probably nobody will have the same success…but niche microblogging will pop up (already did).
20 million uniques? big fucking deal. Even with all the massive hype TC somehow pours on this bullshit service, that’s the big achievement? meh.
Twitter is growing so fast because it is very simple
to use, i think its better than any other social network out there and i use twitter everyday i am so addicted to it!
@seanyoughal
What’s even more impressive is that fact that Twitter has not only created a new social medium for people to communicate but it has single-handedly created an entire new search market that has tremendous value.
I’ve searched on twitter at least a dozen times and have yet to find any relevant information. Google provided results quite quickly though.
you are trying to use Twitter as an archival search engine . It is poisitioned as a search engine of real time information something Google doesn’t do.
Bubblicious?
Compete has them up 76% this month at ~15M. With the major media, U.S. president, celebs, and all the free press it’s getting lately I would expect this kind of surge.
Hell yes! someone should track sales made through Twitter, contact me if u want some data
How was that relevant (aside from mentioning Twitter)?
Well played sir.
I knew that when I heard a couple freshman girls whispering “have you heard of this new twitter thingy?”…”umm i dont know how to describe it. it’s like aim but..”
Heh. Okay, that would definitely explain the frequent fail-whale’s we’ve been seeing lately.
I still don’t know what twitter is all about.
I mean, yes, you can follow people, but if you don’t have any friends that use twitter, what then?
The Colbert bump didn’t hurt either.
No surprise… There are so many celebrities on twitter now… everyone desires to get into their lives…
I am glad it is catching on…
I guess mainstream media still does have alot of influence eh?
Good Job Twitter!
Go Twitter Go!
No wonder, with all that coverage in “traditonal” media!
Exactly, this has more to do with the insane media buzz than a really good quality product!
I think Twitter’s Killer feature is Real Time Critique of Celebs, News and Spin. http://tinyurl.com/csr7gr
Given the amount of free and paid advertising Twitter has gotten the last two months through every imaginable news outlet I would expect no less.
Starting to become a really useful marketing tool too!
Daniel Larsson
https://Spideroak.com
twitter is instant gratification. it doesn’t offer the timesink presented by facebook or myspace, doesn’t waste time diluting its offering by attempting to aggregate entire lives. when i tell people what twitter is, most of them say “That’s it?”, and I get a follow notification from them a couple days later.
It’s all the TV commercial references that are doing it.
Darn it. TechCrunch stripped my < sarcasm > tags…
But honestly how *real* are the numbers? Right now the number of followers and virals out there are grossly inflating the number of people who are really interested in using Twitter. I sense that with the growth of these auto-follow tools the true value and sense of the network is going to be lost.
I have to ‘fess up and say I used the Tweepme gizmo as an experiment, but immediately after I changed my twitter password to prevent it from continuing onward. Regardless of me changing that, I still am being added to random people as a follower (when I did nothing) to the tune of 100-200 people a day. Now I can’t even be bothered to check Twitter frequently because the people I really want to follow are being drowned out by random evangelists, geeks, SEO-merchants and God knows who else!
No wonder the site is constantly at a crawl
Twitter presents no barrier to the entry-level social media user, so millions will use it and rapidly become severely addicted to the service.
Twitter’s growing so exponentially that it is no wonder that it’s slow at times amid growing pains.
I’m personally so addicted to Twitter, that I already spend hours a day reading it. I have an entire internal message board infrastructure (150+ pages strong and growing!!!) dedicated entirely to the free service as I devote more and more resources to my readers.
In all of life, NOTHING matters to me like the needs of my Twitter Readers!
I think you could say that I “suffer” from Stage IV Twitter Addiction Disorder.
I’m lovin’ every minute of it though!
Shameless Plug http://twitter.com/JDEbberly
It’s instant messenger without the transience… and without having random people inject messages into your follow list — unless you follow them.
I think those numbers will continue to increase based on twitter’s disruptive nature.
Regular ppl have not quite caught on yet. Imagine the percentages then !
I still do not see twitter as a busniess? how will it ever make money?
It won’t. And it’s not trying to. Nor could it if it tried.
The point is to get acquired at a hyperinflated valuation thanks to constant hype, leaving the sucker who purchased the company holding the bag. As was the case with YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, and on and on.
TC’s mode is to pick up tips and scoops planted by VCs, and carrying them whole to a crowd of aspergers inflicted fanbois who then amplify the message. In the end, one of these hoaxes gets sold off by a Sand Hill Rd. con-artist and TC keeps getting tips and scoops. TC gets to act like it’s a newspaper, VCs get to con someone, and the fanbois get to tweet all over themselves.
It’s all about the developers, @porto2112 ! Haven’t you read Steve Rubel’s latest post about how Twitter will be monetized?
Read: Twitter’s Monetization Strategy: Developers, Developers, Developers, by Micro Persuasion – http://sn.im/fxgdd
I don’t know how Steve knows so much about Social Media. He’s either a genius with an IQ of 220 or he has a time machine, or both lol!
We all new this would happen. They are so popular and a fun to use. They will just get much bigger, in regards to traffic in the year to come. My question to Tech Crunch and fellow Geeks in regards to Twitter. I was watching Fox news this morning and actor Ashton Kutcher wants to beat CNN for the first account to have 1 Million Followers or something like that. So confused where is Steve Jobs, Bill etc. Why Ashton Kutcher? what has he done other then marry Demi? Where is the universe.
Awesome growth! This is one of the revolutions in this decade, and no wonder, several other startup companies have symbiotic relationship with Twitter and create valuable applications. One of my favorites is http://www.boilingpage.com that brings the hottest pages on the web based on how popular they are in Twitter. It’s the best real-time search engine I’ve ever seen. Here’s an example when I searched for ‘pirates’:
http://www.boil...?search=pirates
It might be a bubble. Like everyone is using it, let’s check out what it is. Every big site grows like this, but it will be interesting to see how it maintains the hits though in the long run.
Interesting timing that this growth of Twitter seems to come at a time when more and more people are out of work and therefore have increased time (and need) to reach out to their network. I wrote a blog about how the two (unemployment and Twitter) might be correlated at:
http://boldmout...s-back-to-work/
Regardless, I believe that there is a real value in Twitter when used effectively. I agree with others’ comments though that the value proposition is somewhat difficult to articulate because so many use Twitter for different reasons.
I am sure twitter is going to catch on hugely with the the less tech savvy mobile social network users as twitter is very usable on a phone whereas more comprehensive lifestream aggregators are just to bloated for effective mobile use. Just too bad trending topics are suddenly going to veer from “tech news” to “celebrity media nonsense”. Clear that growth will continue to boom.
Excellent! Soon, the entire world will know what it plans to make for dinner.
@whocares: I REALLY LOVE ASPARAGUS
Can’t really say I’m shocked by that- Twitter’s growth has been amazing. Then again, MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks also experienced newsworthy growth when they launched. The real question is if Twitter will be able to maintain its popularity.
I still think twitter is a fad, it is going to become a so-so startup soon. We will see. The reason why people seem to be so crazy about this thing now is because there are no other significant innovation coming out from silicon valley. If twitter succeeds, it would confirm that “Web 2.0″ is not dead, and still has potential. To many people in the social media industry, Twitter is more of a self-assurance. The valley is too crowded by so many mediocre “Web 2.0″ companies that do not create real value.
sure, you may have a lot of growth from people signing up but how many of those new users are actually USING twitter? my guess is that there’s been so much press that people are signing up to see what it’s about, updating a few times and then leaving never return. i’ve personally seen it with 5 or 6 people i work with.
i think the greater measurement of twitter’s growth is monthly site visits. let’s look at that and then make the decision if twitter has punched into the mainstream consciousness.
I wonder what the geographic spread of this uptake looks like.
Nerds with no social life who now overcompensate for their perceived previous lack of friends with ‘followers’.
How shocking that it’s big in silicon valley, and with the TC crew of hacks.
This much TV coverage…what did you *think* was going to happen? Twitter is on TV & the radio more than Google, Facebook, or MySpace *combined* right now.
Over the previous month, *so far this year*:
Jan avg daily growth: 17.82%
Feb avg daily growth: 2.9%
March avg daily growth: 37.6%
(these from Google Analytics for my bootstrapped start up…we did 190K visitors yesterday, April 14th…)
Summary here:
It doesn’t take traditional media, or raising capital, to create a hockey stick graph…only a good product & persistence
Quite right: any company that would get so much free publicity would do well in sign-ups and first visits.
However will people still use it after a month?
compete.com says twitter had 14 million uniques in March (I believe they only measure domestic traffic). And I’m sure neilsen’s numbers are different as well… Who is right?
Now that’s a hockey stick. And they’re using it on Facebook. lol.
Twitter signups surged after the incredibly annoying Twitterish Facebook home page redesign, which caused reduced pageviews and unique visitors to Facebook to plunge (although this is being kept under wraps).
Basically when Zuckerberg failed miserably at trying to acquire Twitter, and then by trying to rip off Twitters functionality and forcing some half-assed attempt on all it’s users, Facebook gave Twitter a huge increase in signups. Oh the irony, way to go 24 year old clueless CEO and your sycophantic employees.
Thats crazy. I just joined twitter a few months ago… And i am impressed.
But i stillt don’t publish what i eat and stuff like that, haha
BOOM! When the fuck are you guys going to start having love affairs with businesses that actually make money?