After experiencing torrid growth during the first months of the year, Twitter took a breather in May. According to new comScore data released today, Twitter had 17.6 million U.S. visitors in May, which is only 3.5 percent increase from the 17 million U.S. visitors comScore registered in April. One month does not make a trend, but this is a screeching slowdown from the 82 percent month-over-month growth Twitter had in April and 131 percent growth in March. Recent Compete data also points to a similar slowdown in growth.
These are just U.S. numbers. (ComScore measured 32 million unique visitors worldwide in April). But up until now Twitter’s global growth rate has closely followed its U.S. growth rate. Remember, these numbers only reflect visitors to Twitter.com, not the actual number of registered or active users, which is much less. By one count, Twitter had about 11.5 million registered accounts in May. And probably about half of all consumption of Twitter messages occurs in mobile and desktop clients such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck, which comScore doesn’t capture.
The past few months, more and more traffic was driven to Twitter as politicians, TV journalists, celebrities and cute cats discovered the service and promoted it. Many people visited Twitter out of curiosity and maybe never returned. The measure of Twitter’s success will be how many of those grazers become active users. A short-term breather is to be expected after the astounding growth Twitter went through earlier this year. But if Twitter can’t convince mainstream users to make it a daily habit, this one-month breather could turn into a longer stretch where the service tries to find its natural audience.
What do you think, has Twitter peaked?
It’s growth rate has certainly peaked…they should cash out soon for around $2 billion
i would
does this mean rise and fall of Twitter
Absolutely Twitter has peaked. I saw it coming two months ago and beat TC to the punch
Twitter’s growth rate went from 76% to 39%. This last month Twitter only saw an increase of merely 1% according to Compete.
You can find my coverage and the tip off link in this post here:
http://tomuse.c...ime-search-dead
Soon??? Now!!!!
Deadpool if they cannot find a way to generate revenue.
Posts about twitter on TC has already peaked. For sure.
What does this have to do with Twitt – ooo wait never mind
wow, they are growing so good, it’s a good way to find some traffic, i ihink everubody should use twitter
No way — what happened this weekend in Iran is proof that Twitter provides a real and necessary value. Twitter and the real-time web is just getting started.
agreed.
dito.
I came here to say pretty much this.
A week ago these figures might have been relevant, but with what is happening in Iran and the only reliable and up-to-date source of information being Iranian tweeters, I would not be the least bit surprised to see Twitter’s traffic numbers jump way up once again.
what is Twitter doing that is so important re Iran…I mean whatever the outcome, Iran is still going to be a “death to Israel” kind of place (where u wouldn’t want to be a woman, or a homo, or a…..
I disagree about that – Twitter is not the only place to get up to date information. There are blogs covering the topics there pretty much in detail and that provide more insights than you could ever deliver on twitter.
I agree on the other hand that there is a real value provided by twitter and that it lies pretty much in its real-time nature. But for now I have to say, that (understandably) real-time is just overhyped and therefore the value of twitter and similar services. While the timely and micro aspects complement the web in its nature and add a dimension that was missing it is not the only and most important aspect. When you see, that a lot of the research done on the internet is related to topics and facts that are fundamental and complex in their nature it should be obvious that short and up to date is not the only thing.
And I also have to disagree about the reliability of the sources
– using twitter has no connection at all with being reliable or making you more reliable as a source than using a different channel of communication.
I didn’t mean to imply that Twitter granted them some mantle of reliability. With regards to the Iran situation, it just seems that what certain Tweeters are saying is almost certainly accurate, as it is backed up by global media. The problem is that it isn’t backed up until 4-5 hours later.
Anyway, the point of this article is traffic numbers. I think it’s fairly obvious that Twitter’s traffic numbers are going to be through the roof this month. If you don’t think so, you’re really not paying attention.
Totally agreed, people keep looking at twitter as a single entity website.
It’s a whole shift in the way the web works in real time.
Serving me and not the other way around.
Since these are monthly uniques, a twitter user only has to visit twitter.com once a month to be considered in these stats. I doubt that most twitter users (who are active on their mobile devices) go a full month without logging into the web once. I suspect that this is a fairly accurate estimate..
Or maybe all those users who signed up recently figured out how to use Twitter on their phone
I have no idea if it peaked…
But where did you get/find this information?
“And probably about half of all consumption of Twitter messages occurs in mobile and desktop clients”
Is this just a total guess or can you back it up?
Just wondering – as it seems very high to me and a bit unrealistic.
Not trying to be a smart a$$ – just interested in how you came up with that important piece of information.
That is our experience with TC Twitter traffic, and it is also suggested by other data from outside studies. (Click the 11.5M link for more)
Erick – You can also run UV’s for the 3rd party Twitter app sites and see a correlation.
If you used Twitter jack-ass, you would realize that most ppl barely use the “web” version and run 3rd party tools to use the service.
Go back to your cubicle and figure shit out to share witht he rest of the world that aren’t paying attention to you. better yet, you’re fired.
The growth they had before was not sustainable and was, indeed, remarkable if not unprecedented. It’s a surprise that it happened at all or for as long as it did, frankly.
I think twitter has peaked. Period
I use Twitter everyday and I have not been to the website at all in the last month. I rely exclusively on TwitterBerry and TweetDeck. I’m curious how many others also visit the website only rarely…
I think that is the case with many users. I hardly every goto the direct twitter site anymore.
Yep. I use Twitterific on my iPod and my iMac. Have been to the website maybe twice since I started months ago. Not a good way to measure interest.
Just pay Oprah another bundle.
Coincidentally Techcrunch’s traffic has also slowed down.
I think a lot had to do with Ashton and Oprah and all the celebs.
Once a big celebrity majorly announces his or her twitter presence the numbers will rise again. More interesting to know would be how many of the 11.5 million registered actually use Twitter regularly. Personally I dropped my usage heavily ever since the eleimination of @replies. Also, how high is the bounce rate of the 17 million visitors?
Umm, but the ashton kutcher/cnn thing and oprah started on Twitter AFTER the growth started.
and now its falls, as the non-core users don’t come back.
.
registrations may have peaked (after the initial excitement) but I’m sure I’m not the only person here who has seen profiles with average lead/follow ratios but haven’t posted anything, probably just read them – and even then thru another client not the web site.
Iran is probably a fairly good example, but any really important live news event happening and reported thru twitter channels will bring people back again (IMHO) so fluctuating numbers probably doesn’t mean as much as you might think…
Erick,
Poor timing on your post, considering Twitter is having a banner day reporting the events in Iran. Frankly, I find it disappointing TC has not mentioned Twitter’s impact in breaking, covering and frankly embarrassing the main stream media in regards to this story.
we have mentioned it
I think twitter will have a snap-back period where internet educated that are uninitiated in twitter will continue to hold out or stop all together.
Other news like proof of it being a broadcasting service instead of a social/interactive service is worth keeping in mind. Real-time web might be the future, but it will be different than the pods of networks normal twitter users have.
Probably more and more corporations/media/entertainment will start using twitter and the day-to-day use for Average Guy & Gal will decrease due to follower-envy, frustration with spam, and burnout from blogs like mashable and the like.
Like most new-wave media in the social era (digg, reddit, etc.) twitter’s bubble will burst and settle in with core users.
IMO.
what’s twitter?
Time to sell guys!!!
out of 11.5 million registered users, how much actual traffic to they generate and get? we need holistic (all downloaded twitter clients across all plaforms, all traffic sent to websites from tweets, etc) data to judge the merits of their platform and reach. once someone figures out that data, then we should compare it to facebook and myspace for a true valuation.
Nope, this was done on purpose… now the line chart looks like a bird… How did you guys NOT see that?
I do not think twitter has peaked.
More accurately, it might have peaked for now because anyway it is saturated and awkward on many points. But once they will have corrected their defects they will have a new huge growth.
More details here on what I mean by defects :
http://harrysel...mes-hate-it-too
it’s just the calm before the storm.
Twitter was the object of much curiosity in recent months but the show is over now. It just really isn’t that useful / helpful or interesting.
I think we all now where that graph goes from there–back to earth.
http://search.twitter.com has been more useful to me than google.com in many queries over the past few months. I don’t think twitter traffic has peaked but most people I talk to don’t get it. They need to change something to appeal to more people and get over this hump.
Awesome!!
Could you tell me the name of the retweet twitter plugin you use? Thanks!
its not bad doe, i bet it will reach more than 25 millions at the end of this year!
> Many people visited Twitter out of curiosity and maybe never returned.
Yes, and the same irrelevant question remains, “What are you doing?” I know *so* many who tried Twitter and didn’t ‘get it’ after tweeting answers to the question somewhere between 1-4 times. Twitter needs to ditch the outdated question, show sample usages, and encourage the types of activities and conversations that others who ‘get it’ are engaging in. Enough with the insider’s secrets. Make it obvious and sustain the growth.
clearly it has unless they really do something groundbreaking . next election is 2012
Anyone who thinks Twitter “just isn’t that useful / helpful or interesting” doesn’t know enough about Twitter to be commenting in such an authoritative tone!
What is it that impels people to comment on things they know little about and reveal their ignorance?
That comment said much more about its author than it did about Twitter
or they are older than 18 and have a life????
My take on this would be that the Oprah / Ashton / CNN events skewed the growth trend a bit.
In other words, Twitter should not have grown as much as it did in April and that was compensated for in May.
The April numbers included millions of users that wouldn’t necessarily have ever even tried Twitter but did anyway because their favorite celeb gave it a shout out. Because they don’t fit the Twitter user mold, the came, they got counted (by Compete, ComScore, etc), and they didn’t stick dramatically inflating Twitter’s bounce rate.
So, all those ‘fake’ users (for lack of a better term) dropped off in the following month’s numbers.
Now if that’s true, that would still show a considerable slowing in the growth rate. Maybe ~50% from March to April and ~30% April to May rather than 82%. But it would make a lot more sense than a change from 82% to 4%.
My 2 cents.
Twitter will be soon killed by spam. These endless retweets you fanboys drule about are nothing but spam.
Well said. I’m not a fan of the RT phenomenon.
Real-time is just getting started… Twitter is leading the way and will resolve issues such as spam as the service and audience develops.
Casual users will come and go as they always have done…
IF this was any other company (i.e. Palm, Yahoo, etc…) the story would have read something like…
“How soon to deadpool? Twitter down 79% and 128%”
And buried in the story would be that Twitter would be up 3% verses 82% in April and 131% in March thus the the increase is lower than the previous months… and not actually down.
They need to convert more casual noobs into consistent users. If you ask me, they’ve done quite a poor job of teaching and connecting new users with other like-minded folk/content. Twitter is what you make it, so if you follow some celebrities and some acquaintances that never post, then yes, it’s going to get old quick. They should offer a 1 or 2min intro vid that illustrates some real testimonies and teaches people how to better seek out content that is valuable to them. Currently they throw people in the deep end and hope they get plugged in like the early adopters.
“Take a breather”
Don’t you mean “the bubble has stopped inflating”
Twitters growth was powered by non-organic media sensationalism. Most new users just try it for one or too days before ditching it. Now that everyone’s seen what a useless site it is, naturally its uniques will go down.
If this were an article on any Microsoft product, would you still say “takes a breather”? Or would you say “stalls,” “hits a wall” or “tops out”?
wow ..The rate is up and up
As I said when Mashable picked this up a few days ago:
Twitter growth can no longer be determined just by raw visitor numbers. Only Twitter itself can tell us just what kind of usage they are getting.
Full response here: http://blog.abr...act-or-fiction/
Many users won’t update regularly, they just go on adding followers.
Am I the only one who thinks this may have something to do with the replies fiasco?
I saw a noticeable decrease in twitter activity after they broke the reply system.
You’re welcome for the tip, Erick : )
Unless of course others gave the same tip or you dug up the story on your own.
Nice post regardless, thanks for writing it.
This Stealection is proving Twitter’s worth, http://bit.ly/UVPmW.
This trend corresponds with warmer weather and the end of the school year, as well as a boom in smart phone sales, so I’m not sure you can read much into this.
There are so many conflicting reports about Twitter usage and unique visitors. The site is still generating significant discussion across the news, media and radio with many of my friends participating now to get involved with the service!
Twitter has a role to play on the real-time web and it’s a valuable service for many reasons
Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.
KZ
I think Twitter is just going the way of most new technology – high growth in the beginning, and then tapering off as most people have tried it. “Filtering” then happens – those who really like it will stick with it, while those who were just in to try out because everyone told them they should, would probably stop after awhile. I guess unless Twitter implements something new in its service, they would be “stuck” with their current user base of loyal followers who have stuck it out till now.