Drop in Twitter Users Statistically Significant
Posted 11/23/09 at 03:13:14 PM by Paul Lilly
Maybe Miley Cyrus was on to something, or perhaps she started a trend. But whatever the reason, Twitter's rapid rise appears to have to turned into a downward tumble, according to data provided to eMarketer by Nielsen.
We're not talking about just a few Twitter users leaving the service. According to Nielsen, traffic to Twitter slid 27.8 percent between September and October, dropping from 26.2 million unique visitors to 18.9 million. Nielsen's numbers were perhaps the most dramatic, but other research firms also noted a decline. According to comScore, unique visitors were down 8.1 percent in October, while Compete noted a more modest 2.1 percent drop.
No matter whose numbers you trust, the drop in traffic is concerning for one of the hottest services on the web. But are they telling the whole story?
"While it's valuable to look at Twitter's web traffic, the true picture won't emerge until all the third-party traffic from mobile phones and API clients is accounted for," wrote senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson on the eMarketer blog.
Edit: Nothing new here. These Twitter traffic numbers were released two weeks ago, as we reported here.
Told ya.
Submitted by Mighty BOB! on Tue, 11/24/2009 - 7:38pm
Told ya it was just a fad.. :P
No it's probably premature for me to say that. I'm sure they'll come to some sort of equilibrium, although it may be with a lot less users than they currently have. Either that or they'll try to sell the service to another service like Facebook where it will be integrated and absorbed.
Submitted by doncanz on Mon, 11/23/2009 - 4:25pm
I see no value to this twitting stuff. Oh what did I do today? Scratched me arse, took the dog for a walk in the park bla bla bla WTF? No one communicates verbally anymore. My 17 & 19 year olds cell phones are nothing more than a text messaging system (3047 texts this past month & 4 minutes talk time)and when I say why do you not just pick up the phone and call your freinds they say they can't do that! Same for living vicariously through virtual petz. Sims etc. I am afraid that is why people are less social adept and friendly then they used to be. Social retards is what we old farts call them...oh oh time to update my twit page I feel a shit coming on!
Submitted by JIFF on Tue, 11/24/2009 - 11:11am
Indeed you are an old fart, your kids are using their phones like most kids are using them nowadays.
And I'm sure your kids are interacting with real people and on the flesh in the same way you did, they just have more friends in diffferent levels nowadays, actually kids tend to admit only people they know unlike the old fellows like us who say yes to almost everyone
I have a feeling my Twitter
Submitted by lunchbox73 on Mon, 11/23/2009 - 3:19pm
I have a feeling my Twitter experience was a very common one: I heard about Twitter. I was curious so I went there and signed up. I though "this is pretty lame." I never went back ever again.
Submitted by popstop785 on Mon, 11/23/2009 - 2:48pm
Twitter was fun for a little while. Then spam came around... then redundancy came around... then Opra joined and that's when I stopped.
Besides, most people have swtiched to Facebook as it does the same thing but has far more options and better privacy settings (I don't get boner pill ads trying to be my friend)
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