Comments for Twitter's Growth Slows Dramatically

Twitter's Growth Slows Dramatically

2010-01-19T12:30:00Z

After news about the landing of US Airways 1549 in the Hudson first broke on Twitter in January 2009, the microblogging service quickly captured the imagination of a new group of potential users. Throughout the first months of 2009, Twitter grew at a rapid pace, peaking at a growth rate of 13% in March 2009.

Now, however, according to the latest data from HubSpot, Twitter's growth is slowing dramatically. In October 2009, Twitter's growth rate had fallen to 3.5%. On a positive note, though, the average active user on Twitter today is more engaged than six months ago.

]]>

Most Twitter users, however - even if they are now more engaged on average - still have fewer than 100 followers. Only 18% of all Twitter users have more than 100 followers. A total of 81% of all users are currently also following less than 100 people. Just six months ago, the average user was just following around 40 accounts.

HubSpot's analysis also shows that more Twitter users now include bios (54%), links (65%) and location data (41%) in their profiles.

International Footprint Increases

As we pointed out earlier this month, social media analytics firm Sysomos also noted that most of Twitter's growth is currently happening internationally. According to HubSpot's analysis of over 5 million Twitter accounts, 40% of the top 20 Twitter locations are now outside of North America. In July 2009, only 15% were from outside North America.

For Twitter, this means that its current user base is making better use of the service, but the company also has to worry that its growth is slowing down. Maybe some of the earlier high growth rates were inflated by spam accounts, but a 3.5% growth rate is very low and the overall trend is only pointing down at this time.

Comment from printinginchina on 2011-03-30

2011-03-30T11:42:23Z

http://www.printing-in-china.c...

Comment from Brisbane house washing on 2010-11-26

2010-11-27T04:00:32Z

Maybe the main reason why twitters drastically slow down is because of the existence of Facebook. The ability of Facebook to update the status is a feature that can replace the use of twitter.

Comment from sydney painters on 2010-11-25

2010-11-25T08:11:55Z

I thought twitter grows stronger than ever. But do the other ways of twitter to reach other people help the site to improve their performance? Just like connecting your twitter account into your blog, etc...

Comment from WebVisible on 2010-11-23

2010-11-23T09:20:09Z

My experience is that there seems to be a growth in the market, perhaps more in favour of facebook but I am interested to see in the Caribbean twitter community will grow at same early rate as previous user groups.

Comment from Electronic on 2010-10-25

2010-10-25T21:25:24Z

the competition is great amongst social networks ... tweeter has to step up its game by adding more features etc.

Comment from Tour Rome Italy on 2010-10-06

2010-10-06T10:38:06Z

the microblogging service quickly imagination of a new group of potential users.... but i think it will nevertheless for sometime its growth slows

Comment from Mykalai Kontilai on 2010-10-03

2010-10-03T07:34:07Z

This is just not a good sign for Twitter. I hope that Twitter will soon attain its speed of growing:)

Comment from Max Furniture on 2010-09-28

2010-09-28T10:54:19Z

time is always so,Twitter needs to innovate. It's been the same Twitter for three years now. What's going to attract more businesses to Twitter? What's next Twitter?

Comment from Nightly Business Report on 2010-09-27

2010-09-27T15:08:07Z

Inspite of the above mentioned facts,I still think that there is a huge room for TWITTER in this networking world....Hope for the best!!!

Comment from San Diego Dentist on 2010-09-24

2010-09-24T13:06:05Z

Twitter's growth is slowing dramatically but It will be interesting to see & I think it also have great potential..

Comment from Mykalai Kontilai on 2010-09-21

2010-09-21T13:13:02Z

Even if the graph of twitter's growth is descending but still it is as plain as a pikestaff that it is going to flourish in an inconceivable manner.....just hope for the best...

Comment from work From home on 2010-09-20

2010-09-20T07:05:38Z

Twitter needs to keep the mature user interested. With so many Twitter newbies it's getting back to people literally tweeting what they're doing now. No one cares about that.

Comment from Tarif Awad on 2010-09-11

2010-09-11T09:07:39Z

Your dramatic recent growth (and mine) is coming from the cadre of automatic spammy type followers – like @luvlife, @gurugurusocial and @iwillfindyoulotsamoney. In fact, there are so many that I know longer can take the time to look to see if any of them are actual real followers who know me or find me interesting. Twitter needs an Akismet-program that will weed sleazy followers without my ever seeing them.

Comment from SEO Services on 2010-09-10

2010-09-11T06:09:41Z

let us hope 4 d best .....i m sure dat twitter iz definitely gonna rule dis networking world.......

Comment from Nitesh on 2010-09-10

2010-09-10T12:18:17Z

let us hope 4 d best .....i m sure dat twitter iz definitely gonna rule dis networking world.......

Comment from Joan Austin on 2010-09-10

2010-09-10T10:21:54Z

twitter is the best social site few month slowdown will not going to affect it but there is need to identify the cause then to take corrective measures if they want to be back on track and wants to maintain its leadership position

Comment from Sunbrella Furniture on 2010-08-28

2010-08-28T14:15:59Z

with working on Facebook and Orkut people are more prone towards them. twitter is their next choice.

Comment from Argington Bam on 2010-08-23

2010-08-23T09:19:06Z

twiitter is good for sharing some new topics , thoughts ,
with friends its very amazing for networking to increase your friends.

Comment from Ambella Vanity on 2010-08-16

2010-08-16T09:57:24Z

thats a matter of worry for twitter they might be getting a tough competition from other social sites they need to evolve a new features along with tweet

Comment from Acer laptop battery on 2010-08-13

2010-08-14T06:34:09Z

I think Twitter & Facebook both have great potential.But Twitter needs to keep the mature user interested. With so many Twitter newbies it's getting back to people literally tweeting what they're doing now.

Comment from Jackmark on 2010-08-13

2010-08-13T16:53:08Z

how can you make anything out if a mess like that? Twitter is the fluid and immediate sharing of thoughts and experiences.

Comment from sell old cell phones on 2010-08-05

2010-08-06T06:36:47Z

Easy to understand,A small percentage of a large number can be equal or better that a high percentage of a smaller number. So 3.5% is probably not that bad, especially if it means fewer spam accounts, or better quality users in general.The meaningfulness of 3.5% is all the more since they had such monstrous growth before.

Comment from list building on 2010-08-02

2010-08-02T10:11:50Z

Human interaction is what will drive the long term success of any Social Network. The bots take that away, leading to both a quick growth followed by a quick decline.

Comment from reception desk on 2010-07-26

2010-07-26T12:08:49Z

I don't think it's necessarily a problem that the vast majority of people only follow 100 people or less. That would seem to be a meaningful number of connections, somewhat similar to how Dunbar's number works, although we don't really know what the breakdown is for followers.

Comment from Bathtubs on 2010-07-26

2010-07-26T07:18:56Z

.Twitter is dead simple to use.If you want to have more growth, you'll need to convince the "what's a Browser?" crowd and that pretty much sums up at least 50% of internet users.

Comment from executive conference table on 2010-07-16

2010-07-17T06:27:08Z

I think Twitter & Facebook both have great potential. And both need lots of upgrade build into it. Twitter is the fluid and immediate sharing of thoughts and experiences. Amazing Twitter.

Comment from executive desk on 2010-07-01

2010-07-01T12:25:54Z

Well, I consider that Twitter could do a better job enticing new users to sign up. And for sure, it is enhancing rapidly. But Twitter needs to keep the mature user interested. With so many Twitter newbies it's getting back to people literally tweeting what they're doing now. No one cares about that.

Comment from Capital Gold Group on 2010-07-01

2010-07-01T07:35:49Z

I totally disagree.This is not the scenario for today.It has totally changed in the few months.Anyways nice graphical presentation!!

Comment from Danny DeMichele Photos on 2010-06-30

2010-06-30T10:17:23Z

I have a few ideas rolling around in my head concerning web apps/phone apps that would easily solve some of these problems.What matters now is quality of content, and value derived from Twitter streams.

Comment from Wim Coenen on 2010-06-21

2010-06-21T14:08:50Z

Does any of you realize that at a "mere" 3.5% monthly growth, twitter would have a billion users in about 5 years?

This post might as well have been titled "Insane exponential growth of twitter holds, but now slightly less insane."

Comment from Danny DeMichele Flikr on 2010-06-10

2010-06-10T09:10:41Z

The introduction of auto subscribe bots is a key to the decline of Twitter. Human interaction is what will drive the long term success of any Social Network.

Comment from Western Australia Flowers on 2010-04-09

2010-04-09T09:26:47Z

What matters now is quality of content, and value derived from Twitter streams.

Comment from Mark on 2010-02-04

2010-02-04T09:54:46Z

Kiky.... ever heard of tinyurl ?

And I ain't gonna click on it if you can't even bother to tell me what it is.

Comment from Kiky on 2010-01-31

2010-01-31T14:45:06Z

http://www.facebook.com/tos.php?return_session=1&nochrome=1&fbconnect=1&extern=2&display=popup&api_key=a95b455141f1c76d40987560fb514c1a&v=1.0&next=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2Fmt423-static%2Fplugins%2FFacebookCommenters%2Fxd_receiver.html%3Ffb_login%26fname%3D_opener%26guid%3D0.10297127289180541&cancel_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2Fmt423-static%2Fplugins%2FFacebookCommenters%2Fxd_receiver.html%23fname%3D_opener%26%257B%2522t%2522%253A3%252C%2522h%2522%253A%2522fbCancelLogin%2522%252C%2522sid%2522%253A%25220.566%2522%257D&channel_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2Fmt423-static%2Fplugins%2FFacebookCommenters%2Fxd_receiver.html&locale=id_ID

Comment from Nicholas Kemp on 2010-01-26

2010-01-27T00:24:46Z

I am not a big fan of twitter either. I have several friends who boast about their 1000's of followers, yet essentially they achieve nothing with it as a marketing tool.

Comment from Esdee on 2010-01-23

2010-01-23T21:18:54Z

I cant imagine following 100 persons on twitter. how can you make anything out if a mess like that? why is this taken as a measure of quality in this study is out of my understanding. probably the authors just liked the number '100'.

certainly if you use twitter 'professionally' there are the tools to handle that, but if the idea was to use twitter a commodity tool like, say SMS, then this research is totally useless, hunting only the hype after the next buzz word...'aaah! twitter growth is going down' - does it mean nobody is using twitter anymore? gimme a break

Comment from mostmodernist on 2010-01-22

2010-01-22T22:12:39Z

Ratio statistics don't say anything by themselves. It's what people say about ratio statistics, which can be extremely subjective, especially if the interpreter falls prey to "this percent is bigger than that percent hrr hrr".

A small percentage of a large number can be equal or better that a high percentage of a smaller number. So 3.5% is probably not that bad, especially if it means fewer spam accounts, or better quality users in general.

The meaningfulness of 3.5% is all the more since they had such monstrous growth before.

Comment from artist paintings on 2010-01-22

2010-01-22T18:35:06Z

Twitter is kind of annoying..and takes a lot of time. And i dont know how to make some friends on it, just a bunch of 'followers'. I think 140 characters is just too like to say anything meaningful. Seems like everyone is on twitter trying to get some leads, but nobody is making any money from it. So yeah i think it will fail, once everybody finally realizes that their just wasting time on it everyday.

Comment from Mark McCulloch on 2010-01-20

2010-01-21T04:07:06Z

I have been researching social media for a very long time now and I have not been able to find such top quality information untill I came to your blog today.

Mark McCulloch

Comment from Morepork on 2010-01-20

2010-01-20T09:36:29Z

The article states that most of the growth is occurring abroad. If the worldwide growth rate has slowed, then obviously it can be implied that the growth rate within the US has slowed significantly.

As Olivier Coudert mentions above, the most likely explanation is that Twitter is reaching market saturation. i.e. Almost everyone who would want to join Twitter already has joined.
However the increased usage indicates that Twitter will eventually settle down to a small by hardcore fan base.

For those such as Todd who said
"Good - I don't want Twitter to become Facebook."
Don't worry, Twitter will not become Facebook.
Looking at these stats, in about 3 years Twitter will become MySpace.

Comment from William J Brown on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T04:17:52Z

The growth chart is not going in the right direction ...

Comment from Condos Makati Philippines on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T03:59:14Z

I heard that bill gates uses twitter now.

Actually... he does use twitter now. Search for him he has 100k+ followers now.

Comment from _mark on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T02:17:10Z

Twitter is about quality. Not quantity. Most people don't know what to do with it, they just want to 'chat'. Twitter is not a place for chat or smalltalk. So this is fine by me.

Comment from Camnio Media on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T01:59:37Z

What would the future of social marketing take us?

Comment from Olivier Coudert on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T01:30:18Z

The new account growth peaked at the top of the Twitter hype, where all celebrities flocked to the site, pulling a large number of people in. At the end though, most of these people didn't do much with their account. Twitter needs to provide a more stable, faster, attractive platform, if it wants to go back to double-digit monthly growth.

Since most of the growth today happens outside of the US, one can expect that the growth will continue at the same rate until it reaches the same saturation level abroad as it already reached in the US. After that, it will all depends on whether Twitter can lure more people with new services. Come on, be creative, there are a few 1000's of companies in the Twitter eco-system. Become a free substitute for SMS worldwide, make a better use of geo-tagging, create new business models with corporations and small business that want to promote their image, their product, or collect information on their customers. I don't want Facebook to replace Twitter, this is NOT the same tool!

Comment from Kris Olin on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T01:15:14Z

No wonder that this is happening. It is the same phenomenon that happens on the sharemarket. The highs and lows always come back to the trend eventually. As Twitter gets older we will see its trend more clearly.

Comment from Jennifer on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T01:11:37Z

I have to say I'm not too big on twitter. Ya it's kind of cool but facebook does essentially everything it can do. I'll stick with my e cig and using facebook.

Comment from Justin White on 2010-01-19

2010-01-20T01:01:26Z

Is anyone truly surprised by this dude!

RT
www.online-anonymity.se.tc

Comment from Sales Dudes on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T21:37:36Z

Bah. Twitter is the future. 3.5% growth is still just fine indeed. And the quality of tweets is getting better. Check out http://twitter.com/SalesDudes for media and business tips and humor.

Comment from William Mougayar on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T19:19:28Z

The # of users is a misleading stat. What matters now is quality of content, and value derived from Twitter streams.
Do we have any stats on that?

Comment from Frederic Lardinois on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T16:11:18Z

@ed - that makes sense, though - even if Twitter's growth is coming to a halt, it is still growing nevertheless

@Klaus-Peter: thanks for the link - I will have to look into that

@Mark - interesting thoughts regarding the Dunbar number and Twitter. I'm expecting a few more detailed reports in the next few weeks, so this should be interesting to follow

Comment from GraffitiGroups on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T15:19:01Z

The introduction of auto subscribe bots is a key to the decline of Twitter. Human interaction is what will drive the long term success of any Social Network. The bots take that away, leading to both a quick growth followed by a quick decline. Offering users more free marketing tools and privacy controls will create slower but a more solid long term growth.

Comment from Ed on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T15:06:24Z

"Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter's highest-usage day ever. (And today will be bigger)."-Evan Williams

I think you're missing some data Fred :)

Comment from GraffitiGroups on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T15:04:22Z

It's an unfortunate fact that Twitter has become over-run with spammers and scammers. How many times hav you seen a post like these, "Internet guru makes Billions and shares his marketing secret with internet chumps for $47.00" or " Make $10,000 a week while you sleep - we show you how for just $47.00"

I do think the internet world will see a rise in "monitored social sites" that provide users better privacy settings for group topics. Being able to control who sees what content will be appealing to serious users.

Comment from Furious Island on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T14:52:50Z

Has there been any research into the growth in the Caribbean? Based that the largest percentage of growth is now international, own research finding data surrounding the growth of social media in the Caribbean market is very difficult and what is out there is very poor quality. I would be interested if the data was further segmented into regions etc. My experience is that there seems to be a growth in the market, perhaps more in favour of facebook but I am interested to see in the Caribbean twitter community will grow at same early rate as previous user groups.

I too would be interested in the new possible contenders for twitters crown, I believe there is room for another platform. Geographically the way it twitter is used is different and I would love to get more research in this area.

Comment from AirBoss on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T14:48:43Z

There are only so many twits who tweet.

Comment from Dubois1986 on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T14:40:37Z

GOOD...UP..UP..To create the perfect image, shape fashion. NIKE,JORDAN,SHOES,COACH,GUCC,HANDBAGS,POLO,LACOSTE,T-SHIRTS,ECT... allbyer/com THANKS...

Comment from Todd on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T14:36:17Z

Good - I don't want Twitter to become Facebook.

Comment from Zimfa on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:52:53Z

Looks like it's not just this month. MWD traffic reports back to November and even before than that traffic has started to decline.

http://www.mwd.com/2009/11/twitter-will-start-losing-traffic-in-december/

Comment from Klaus-Peter Speidel on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:52:32Z

This is as predicted by the economist Jérémie Bertrand on hypios Thinking, based on the crazy hypothesis that twitter might be a ponzi scheme where the currency is attention. It's a fun theoretical post with great illustrations showing that a large part of twitter might be bound to collapse once there is no more new attention pulled in.
http://www.hypios.com/thinking/2009/11/18/is-twitter-a-ponzi-scheme/

Comment from Toby on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:36:01Z

Surely its understandable that the growth of the Twitter phenomenon has slowed dramatically, afterall its just a microblogging site, its really quite limited in functionality and therefore people are going to loose interest in a model that rarely changes. Right?

Comment from Piedra on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:33:54Z

I think the model is still starting

Comment from Bernie Borges on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:33:13Z

It will be interesting to see if this is just a dip for Twitter or turning a corner. Twitter needs to keep the mature user interested. With so many Twitter newbies it's getting back to people literally tweeting what they're doing now. No one cares about that.

Experienced Twitter users enjoy making connections, sharing relevant links and access to breaking news and other's relevant links. Brands have begun to figure out out how to use Twitter effectively. But, there's room for improvement.

Twitter needs to innovate. It's been the same Twitter for three years now. What's going to attract more businesses to Twitter? What's next Twitter?

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

Comment from sanjeev on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:14:48Z

I think model is yet to evolve.

Comment from Mark Dykeman on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:11:59Z

Frederic, this comment is interesting: "Most Twitter users, however - even if they are now more engaged on average - still have fewer than 100 followers. Only 18% of all Twitter users have more than 100 followers. A total of 81% of all users are currently also following less than 100 people. Just 6 months ago, the average user was just following around 40 accounts."

So this means that Twitter users are now following more people, on average, during the past 6 months. That's possibly a good thing, although spam is probably a factor.

Let's not forget that most people will probably have difficulties in tracking more than 100 people anyway, unless they adopt the "river" concept (dip in occasionally to see what's floating by) or use some combination of lists, filtering, and automated searching.

Comment from deralaand on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T13:05:55Z

I think Twitter could do a better job enticing new users to sign up.
Their home page is rather cryptic to new, inexperienced users.
There is no real basic "How & Why" for noobs.

Don't get me wrong...Twitter is dead simple to use. However, if you want to have more growth, you'll need to convince the "what's a Browser?" crowd. ...and that pretty much sums up at least 50% of internet users. There's no way these people are gonna know what a hash tag is or how to shorten a URL or even how to properly formulate a Tweet in the first place.

I have a few ideas rolling around in my head concerning web apps/phone apps that would easily solve some of these problems. But I don't have 50,000+ followers on any social site...so I'm pretty much disregarded.

Comment from Ian Hendry on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T12:46:01Z

Twitter growth slowing? No doubt the endless plugging on TV talk shows got a lot of people flocking to the site with minimal subsequent engagement. I'd like to think those of us left on Twitter are using it more and for more serious purposes though.

For example, there are many small companies using it to find new suppliers or to engage with new customers tweeting a need for what they do. Those with Twitter client software open on their computers will likely tweet for a recommendation from the crowd than search for a business on Google these days.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Comment from johnhaydon on 2010-01-19

2010-01-19T12:37:18Z

Interestingly I made a 23-second video on Twitter's decline in growth rate when compared to Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8ezYYIoWS0