Ever since last summer, Twitter’s growth in the U.S. has been stalling. But in October, the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month. Estimates released today by comScore put Twitter’s domestic unique visitors at 19.2 million, down from 20.9 million in September.
On an annual basis, Twitter is still going gangbusters with 1,271 percent growth from 1.4 million visitors in October, 2008. And on a global basis, it still seems to be chugging away with 58.4 million visitors in September. But a hypergrowth company like Twitter cannot afford to slow down in its home market.
CEO Evan Williams recently acknowledged the slowdown in the U.S., and hopes that a slew of new features will help revive growth to the site. Many of these features are already rolling out, including the new Retweet button, Lists, and Geolocation features.
Twitter is obviously committed to making its service better on its own Website (these numbers do not measure usage on mobile or desktop clients, which is easily half of all Twitter usage). But while it fiddles, rival Facebook keeps moving further and further ahead.
Will the new features be enough to bring back growth in the U.S.? If they don’t, Twitter’s troubles will really begin.
Does that mean it’s only worth $920 million now?
This means they lost the narrow window of opportunity to sell their crap to a clueless buyer…
i still think TV channels would be interested enough to not let it die
+1
You retards. it only means ppl are using other clients and not going to their website. lame. + 1
i don’t. my friends don’t . who are these people?
I do.
My friends do.
Who the hell are you?
(Hate to defend a poster that starts out his comment with ‘you retard,’ though. Consider this a counter-critique to you specifically instead of a backing rebuttal to J. Lame Poster above.)
Who knows?
It’s pointless and now it’s dying.
I am not sure that I buy the website versus 3rd party client argument: A lot of people use 3rd party client but how many of those do not visit twitter.com at least once a month?
Not only that, but twitter would of course be including api access in the unique visitors count… perhaps the “retard” COP is confusing unique visitors with website hit counts?
OK Guys. Didn’t mean to start a flame-war.
I personally (and several ppl i know) access Twitter through TweetDeck iphone client or via Brizzly (let me know if ya need an invite).
Point is that when TC compares Site XYZ and Twitter based on web visits/hits its a flawed comparison. See the later post today by Erik talking about # of tweets. Thats more close to the actual usage.
Peace.
The CEO has acknowledged the slowdown..So lets agree to the fact that it is dying..
But how is the retweet feature or Geolocation supposed to revive growth..If Twitter has to help itself in anyway, it should post a press release telling us how exactly the website will add value to our lives..
Yep, should have sold already.
I wondered recently whether Twitter (and Facebook, for that matter) was like the new public access TV in that it gives regular folks a chance to broadcast their opinions but no one really cares what they have to say.
This is the time for them to make “the deal”. Always sell on the turn downward. Mark my words, M&A talks underway, decision by end of year. Value $250M.
i think that ship has sailed. who walks away from $1B? you’re dead on about $250M.
http://bit.ly/4o91ci
Read this one excellent article on twitter.
My take on Twitter: Flamboyance of Twitter Story – and The Risk [Hype/Hoopla] | Technology http://bit.ly/4oPlQ9
Wrote it sometime back.
A lot of people including VC’s and social media experts like Scoble have been boasting about Twitter on their “simplicity” concept. Well, this is the consequence of it. “Simple” concept wears out fast.
This is pretty much it for Twitter. It is not going to go up from now on. It will drop even further once internet marketers realize they are not getting anything out of Twitter. I am expecting a larger drop beginning of the year.
+1
Internet marketers are making a mess in twitter.
I hope they part from twitter ASAP.
Adwords is still the best tool to attract qualified ppl to commercial websites without losing tons of time.
PS I’m an Internet Marketer but I behave like normal ppl in twitter and use it to get new interesting friends, not sales.
What this probably shows is that the desktop clients are becoming better/ more adopted and the website is becoming less important to Twitter.
What I would like to see is the number of active Twitter users (who post at least once in that month). And the total number of tweets per month.
Can anybody provide that data?
Only Twitter would really have that aggregate data. I don’t think they wanna share.
what about new users? i would imagine that new users are signing up through twitter and not some third party.
I’d say growth has stalled.
They may be signing up through twitter but that is only one visit. After that they probably download a client and post through it.
yes, but the point here is that the new user still needs to visit twitter at least once. This data indicates that new user growth is not just stalling, but now declining.
after looking at the other responses to this thread, it’s funny how they all ignore this point. They keep jabbering on about how users don’t use the main site, without addressing the issue here: NEW user growth.
Everyone is drunk on the kool-aid I suppose.
only hardcore geeks and fans would use twitter on a client. they’re not numerous enough to sustain growth
Why would you think that ‘only hardcore geeks and fans would use twitter on a client’. The last stat that I recall is that over 70% of usage of twitter is via client.
to give you another example, Skype has 500m registered users. That is more than Facebook has.
I think users understand clients very well and know how to use them.
Completely agree with Jens, I don’t think the right metric is being looked at here.
While I’m sure desktop/mobile clients make up a non-trivial portion of usage, I find it hard to believe almost every user doesn’t visit the website at least -once- per month.
I use desktop and mobile clients constantly. The only time I visit the twitter site directly is to check out new followers before accepting the follow.
Then you need TweetDeck then….
I haven’t been on the site in months. I’m one of the legion who “doesn’t get it” about Twitter. I joined to investigate the hype. I came, I saw, and then I basically left. I doubt I will be the only one to come to this conclusion among Twitter’s many users. As a matter of fact, I bet this conclusion is shared by the majority of the user base. Of course, Twitter is going to show the wrong metrics. The truth is a very small percentage of the base accounts for the vast majority of the activity. You’ve heard of the old 80-20 Rule. In Twitter’s case I would say it’s more like 90-10: ninety percent of the activity is coming from 10 percent of the users.
Couldn’t agree more – Twitter adds no value to me. It’s a load of garbage “tweets” – I’d rather join a forum of like minded people and have a more indepth conversation or simply chat/talk to people on Skype. Twitter has zero value to me any many other people. The hype is phenomenal about Twitter and once that dies down it’ll quickly wither on the vine.
agreed.
I’m going to avoid gushing over Twitter here to reveal a few things.
1. This is US only. Twitter has said publicly many times that International growth has been tremendous and they’ve recently inked deals with international carriers in India among others to bring Twitter SMS to more countries.
2. This does not count API requests from the thousands of 3rd party apps. More people every day are realizing how challenging and cripled Twitter.com is (sorry it still needs a lot of work) and they’re graduating to 3rd party clients on their phones and desktops.
3. The broadcast and print media frenzy over Twitter has stopped or at least leveled out. This means that less moms and daytime drama viewers are hearing about Twitter which means less of them are trying the service out. They don’t last long anyway so those huge growth stats were inflated since tons of studies reported that the CNN viewers who joined to follow Ashton didn’t hang around very long.
So influx of soccer moms, most leave, some stay, those that stay want more and start using a 3rd party app which, according to these stats, is just the same as them leaving since comscore can’t track those stats.
I think if Twitter gave a solid API usage number (just a percentage) we’d be able to measure it a little better. I think they’ve said off the record that 90% of their traffic is on the API. So multiply this number and that will be a more fair comparison.
yes site visitors are down but I think people are using Twitter via SMS and 3rd parties more now than ever and we haven’t seen the death of Twitter yet even though on the web, it’s inevitable at some point in the next 5-10 years.
Why does it matter how many visitors does the site itself have rather than the total number of users (including mobile and desktop)?
To me does numbers mean that there is more and more people using apps because it is more convenient for an active user to use those. Using the site can only be useful for very light users, which should not be the main focus of the company anyways.
I agree that the metric is in question for being probably the wrong one to measure by. However there’s also the question of whether ComScore even has accurate data. I’d go with QuantCast’s numbers personally, which show an uptick lately though the site actually isn’t at its peak, and hasn’t been since the last iPhone launch:
http://www.quan...com/twitter.com
Yea but how does the use of twitter through apps get factored in?
I myself use twitter many times a day however I maybe visit twitter.com once a month to change a profile pic or at work.
I use Tweetdeck at home and Twidroid on my Android phone and access it multiple times a day because the apps are more feature filled than the wesbsite frankly.
Clearly, as other above have stated, the web site numbers are not nearly as important as the total unique tweets out there. Twitter’s end-game monetization will be driven via integration into the twitstreams.
So its really about the growth of the service, not the web site that matters. That said, they’d better get the platform side of the house in order or else another player will eventually exploit this weakness.
Unless you are promoting or spamming, or for some reason love mindless celebrity drivel, there is nothing for you on Twitter.
Twitter is a fad
+ 1
You mean not everyone in the US wants to trade a rich experience like FB for a lesser, spam-ridden experience on Twitter.
Wow, I can’t believe it. I mean everyone I know is on Twitter and everyone I know refers to every web site as a “service” so surely that is indicative of every one in the US.
FB isn’t that rich, and i’m not sure FB isn’t next.
So?
This might be related to Twitter follower emails ending up in the spam folder more often (for me, at least). That’s their main source of re-engagement.
Yeah most people are moving to 3rd party apps and cell phone apps, etc. Do the metrics record data from all these sources?
India is developing an entire protocol for their cell phone network(s) as an indication of how the data is moving away from websites.
Is it here? Is it there? Is it over there? Dr. Seuss would know.
Twitter= Spam Farm = Unfortunately, closed my account because of that!
Twitter does often feel like just another spammed inbox. Maybe the point is to just follow your friends? Oh, that’s FB’s role.. Can’t ignore the underlying “pulse of the world” effect, though. Its a very powerful connective tissue that did not exist before.
I agree that oversimplified service like Twitter may wear-out in near future. Until now, almost all main niches are occupied with usefull services. Google for searching, eBay for trade, Amazon – books, YouTube – videos, Facebook – social. All of them have some practical value for an user.
Twitter is only such service without strong practical use. Its more like a fad. People get interested, people get bored, people stop to use it. But people don’t stop using eBay or Google because they trade and search info constantly.
Twitter-Fatigue
Hearing anything about Twitter, especially from main-stream celebrities and media, just makes my head ache.
I find it amusing that this post appears right above “Twitter, Facebook Come To Xbox 360 On Nov. 17″ in which we read: “It may also mean that there’s nothing you can to do stop Twitter’s worldwide dominance. ”
I don’t see this as a big deal. Web clients like Brizzly and Seesmic Web are siphoning away people that don’t want to use a dedicated client away from twitter.com. So what?
I’ll be happy when twitter becomes a niche service. Enough people trying to push it on everyone. For a lot of people, Twitter is and will always be a useless stupid service.
1. it would have been impossible to keep their trajectory at previous levels – they were always heading for a fall
2. citing new functionality as a way of increasing demand is a dowward slope – i dont recall YouTube’s CEO having to announce new features to stem falling demand
3. client based usage far exceeds web based – early days to start with the negative growth stories
We should worry about the stock market not Twitter traffic. They are doing well, they are big boys.
Facebook will crush Twatter. Sharing information (for most people, unless your famous or promoting crap) is about relationships. Knowing people makes a big difference. Therefore, the majority of people will share and consequenly only care about FB-based postings. All FB needs is an anonymous Follow mechanism for narcissists and better “news feed only” lightweight and they’re done.
I’ve said for a while that Twitter strikes me as a social RSS feed more than anything else. How else can you determine the feed of news and information you receive based on people rather than publications or keyword searches?
That said, maybe Twitter is starting to actually coalesce into what it truly is, and people are trying less and less to shoehorn it into too-broad applications. Open, multi-directional communication in RSS feeds… that’s Twitter, to me.
Accounting for API numbers may be the biggest indicator issue here. It’s estimated that between 20 to 25% of Twitter users login or tweet from their phone. An eMarketer report from earlier this month showed that 38% of US Internet users access Twitter from 4 or more devices. 39% of Twitter users under 35 checked the site at least 10 times every day.
http://www.emar....aspx?R=1007359
http://www.emar....aspx?R=1007352
That’s significant, especially as Twitter apps for multiple devices continue to improve and gain traction among consumers.
The study obviously does not bode WELL for Twitter — 3rd Parties or not — they need to continue to drive users to their Website. Still, it’s premature for Ev & Biz to start worrying too much.
Goodbye twitter. It was fun watching the revolution of the green avatars.
Declining US growth is more than a problem for Twitter: it’s a problem for Techcrunch and all the other pointless early adopter types like Scoble, Loic, etc. who have staked their reputations on this thing succeeding, and who’ve all forgotten how disconnected they are from normal internet-using people.
And it’s also a problem for MG, who as we speak is probably writing an essay about retweets. Oh wait, he already did that. If this downward trend continues someone needs to put him on 24/7 suicide watch.
you almost had me but then you went too far with the whole suicide thing. really, that’s kind of a dick thing to say.
haha twitter hype is drying out, which is good.
actual website usage stats are very important in twitter case, because desktop and 3rd party apps are used by experienced power users, I have 30 followers only, and I follow merely 50 people, I dont think I need a separate desktop app for this. New twitter users use twitter.com for using it, only heavy users use desktop clients. As you see web visitors are declining, means less people started to sign up on twitter, and small users are not coming back. In the end only power users will end up on twitter, using it to stream whatever they stream. On twitter its all about producers and consumers, most popular users (producers) on twitter have very large number of followers but dont follow that much themselves, and small users (consumers) have subscribed to many people but dont have subscribers. They wont stream anything in there just because their tweets wont get anyone attention cuz nobody gives a damn about their opinion, twitter is dominated, its impossible for little man’s tweet to get noticed among turmoil of retweets of popular guys tweets.
As the dust settles down that what is going to happen with twitter it will become a tool where internet celebrities broadcast their stream to the world of information consumers on the internet.
yeah, I think its fatigue. Once you have >100 follows, you can’t keep up and the noise in general is unsustainable. International growth will not matter if US growth stalls.
If I had a “Twitter health” dashboard on my desk, it would have these key indicators or metrics for any given timeframe of choice:
1. Traffic to twitter.com
2. API traffic stats
3. No. of newly created users
4. No. of active users
But that’s just me.
You have to register and use it for a couple of days to find out that it is totally useless…
lol, no you don’t. I’ve never had an account and I am fairly confident it is useless.
As expected!! I cant think of anybody who uses it. Register i did but never went about using it. Also think that Facebook’s status update is eating away into twitter traffic.
All I know is that I spend a lot more time on twitter.com than I used to. The new features are to blame.
I’m visiting Twitter a lot less these days because not many of my friends are active anymore. Celebs still post, but that is a very one-sided conversation.
I knew twitter is crap because I only had 3 or 4 tweets in total and haven’t any new tweet for two months, but I still get new followers every week. I, myself, even wonder, why the hell these people want to follow me?
I use an application… never visit Twitter except for managing my lists (which only happened recently).
When will you guys rely on something other than ComScore to report on Twitter’s growth/lack of growth?
Something like # of Tweets in a month from the US would be a decent barometer for month-over-month activity comparison.
Amen……data shows 80%+ of users leverage twitter clients
The site is called TechCrunch (I think it is a great site). But why 90% of the article revolves around social sites (facebook, twitter) and useless companies who are building basically apps to service these two companies. isn’t the WWW bigger than social networking and social gaming. How about covering other types of sites? How many articles on Twitter can we read in a day? Despite all its HYPE twitter is not what it is made out to be. Please let’s have a diversity in posts that you guys have… it will make you an EVEN better site.
And this leveling is a surprise?!
finally the hype is wearing off. circle jerks just don’t feel as good as the real thing
My long held belief is that Twitter has and will continue to be a disruptive force in PR & media but will never become a mainstream consumer communications tool. Maybe this trend reflects that.
I don’t believe Twitter can grow further without desktop clients. Web sites are fine for trying stuff out and casual stuff, but not if it’s a day-to-day thing.
sustainable use of twitter is niche
3rd party clients are in the charity business
Eric,
I just read your other article (http://www.tech...nkedin-twitter/) where you mention that comScore has changed the way they count users from their workplace, which has resulted in a steep upwards adjustment of the number of uniques for LinkedIn. I couldn’t help but notice that the downward adjustment for Twitter occurred at the same time. Is it possible that Twitter is now registering fewer visitors with comScore perhaps because people don’t use Twitter as much at work? Then the downward change could be merely a result of comScore’s change to their accounting system…
I dont think Twitter has anything to panic about. Really, with the boom of traffic it experienced about for year, it eventually was going to have a downfall. It can still be useful for things here or there. I think the traffic will always be there, even if its not quite as much.
Yup, Twitter should have sold to Facebook for $500M.
Seriously, this will go down in history as one of the biggest fads.
Most users (80%+ use twitter clients)…..this doesn’t show much
Twitter is what Marimba was 10 years ago.
ITS THE LATEST PUSH-MARKETING FAD. AS A PROMOTER-AWESOME; AS A CONSUMER?
Watch for the latest GPS-centric p to p service to eat its lunch in 2 years…
Facebook will win.
it coud be…
Loss of 8percent is major im sure the folks at twitter are venting right about now! ,,,, at least the can vent at http://www.ventnation.com ! lol
Do they publish #tweets generated, # of new reg users or other tangible metrics of usage/growth? 3rd party app blur real numbers.