I've started writing for VentureBeat. Here's an excerpt from my first post. Read the full post here.
October numbers are in, and Comscore, Compete, Google, and Quantcast all agree: US traffic to Twitter.com reached a peak in July or August and has begun to decline slowly.
According to Comscore, October 2009 traffic was down 8% from from September 2009, while Compete shows a more modest decline of 2.1%. Still, on a year-over year basis, US Twitter visitor counts are up 1,271% according to Comscore, and 578% according to Compete.
Twitter’s phenomenal growth over the past year can be attributed to factors like media coverage of celebrities on Twitter, Twitter founder Ev Williams’ appearance on Oprah, and Oprah’s joining the service. But its stalled growth and slight decline since September could indicate that interest in the service is limited and has reached its peak.
Nielsen reported in April that 60% of new Twitter users drop off after a month. In response to the objection that many Twitter users access the service solely via third-party applications or mobile phones, Nielsen found that Twitter drop-off rates were the same for applications. “There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point,” wrote David Martin, VP of Primary Research at Nielsen Online. Even though Twitter got a huge influx of new users over the summer, as the charts show, it seems most of these users didn’t stick around through the fall. Is it possible that Twitter doesn’t have the mainstream appeal to “make Twitter essential to everyone’s lives,” as Ev Williams stated in a recent BBC interview?
Of course, traffic to Twitter is not the only indication of its health, as Twitter users so adamantly informed Nielsen last spring. Let’s look at two more factors: search and traffic to third-party Twitter sites.
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