Exploring Social Media: Twitter Adoption Stats and Demographics

Exploring Social Media article series badgeHitwise recently covered a variety of posts about Twitter traffic with some interesting analysis and reports.

In the most recent post on “Twitter traffic according to Hitwise,” Hitwise reports that the UK, USA, and Australia show a dramatic increase in Twitter usage and visits.

Let’s start with the UK. Twitter.com is the 291st most visited website in the UK. Internet traffic has increased by 974% over one year, see the graph below.

Traffic to Twitter from Australia has also grown significantly, 517.9% up over one year, as shown on the graph below.

…A few days earlier an analysis of Twitter traffic in the USA was also published. According to Hitwise, Twitter.com attracts more visitors than Digg. Twitter is ranked #84 in computers and Internet category, one place before Digg, ranked #85.

In April of 2008, Heather Hopkins at Hitwise analyzed the statistics of Twitter traffic to determine if this social interaction and microblogging service had hit the main steam for acceptance. Her research and analysis found that while it was increasing in usage and acceptance, Twitter ranked at 439 among “Social Networks and Forums” and was ranked at 4,309 for all types of websites.

With this new analysis, Twitter is scoring dramatically high around the world inside and outside of its own category. There has also been dramatic increase in Twitter usage traffic as well as adoption. As it stands, Twitter appears to have continued growth and enthusiasm – as long as the funding, functionality, and third-party ease-of-use products continue to be supported.

Twitter Driving Third-Party Apps Market

Twitter isn’t easy to use. It should be, but it’s core format isn’t very user friendly.

See Also

Twitter works best when the tweets are created and processed through third-party applications, such as Tweetdeck, PocketTweets, Twitter for iPhone, Twitterrific, Tweetr, Twhirl, Twinkle, Tweetie, Hahlo, and Twittelator rather than the Twitter website.

The lack of features, function, form, and usability is driving a huge market for third-party apps on various operating systems and mobile products and services. Instead of Twitter competing much against Twitter-like competitors, third-party applications are vying for market control of users using Twitter.

It’s fascinating to watch the growth of these third-party apps, moving away from a centric web application upon which users depend to a third-party market competition and industry, depending upon a central supplier.

In many ways, Twitter is still early in its development, and the community is now directing its growth, usage, and purpose rather than the developers. This changes the adoption rate dramatically.

Exploring Social Media Series

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Lorelle VanFossen

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.

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