State Of The #Twittersphere: User Growth Slows Down To 3.5% Per Month

Marketing software startup HubSpot has put together its third ‘State of the Twittersphere’ report, which is based on an analysis of more than 5 million Twitter accounts and 6 million tweets, collected by the company’s free Twitter Grader tool.

The main take-away from the report (PDF): peaking at around 13% in March 2009, growth in new Twitter users has recently slowed down significantly, dropping to a mere 3.5% in October 2009. That’s still growth, but a mind-blowing growth rate it is no longer.

And as we’ve reported before, visits to Twitter.com have declined in number too, dropping 8% in October 2009. Also, Erick yesterday posted a must-read analysis of how the realtime web (and Twitter specifically) can be measured, if you’re interested.

We should also note Twitter CEO Evan Williams recently tweeted that they had their single biggest usage day on Jan 12, and that they were expecting to break that record again the day after. That is well possible, and consistent with HubSpot’s findings:

In the seven months since HubSpot last examined the ‘twittersphere’, the average Twitter user has become less of a newbie, claims the company in the report. The average user is not only following more people, he or she also gets followed by more people and posts more updates.

To sum up:

– Today the average Twitter account has 300 followers; in July 2009, it had 70
– The average account now follows 173 accounts; in July 2009 it was only following 47
– The average account today has posted 420 updates; in July 2009 that number was 119

Also worth noting: HubSpot says the average Twitter account became better implemented during the period from July 2009 to January 2010, as more users have taken the time to complete their profiles, adding bios, locations and web addresses.

HubSpot’s report paints a picture of Twitter slowly but surely increasing its international footprint: locations listed in Twitter profiles (and thus self-reported by users) were much more spread across the globe than before:

– 15% of the top 20 Twitter locations were outside North America in July 2009
– 40% of the top 20 Twitter locations are outside North America in January 2010

Looking at user patterns, HubSpot found that Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of total tweets in the analysis, while 10-11 pm appears to be the most active hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day.

Finally, HubSpot claims the vast majority of Twitter users have networks under 100 people: 82% of users have less than 100 followers while 81% are following less than 100 people.

Does the above ring true for you?

(Via HubSpot blog)