How We Tweet: The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients
Last November we put up a guide to the most popular Twitter clients. For that post we looked at a random sample of 717 tweets from a handful of heavy Twitter users and identified 19 different ways people interacted with the service. Twitter has one of the fastest growing application ecosystems of any web service outside of Facebook. For this post, we looked at 37,248 tweets and found 142 different ways in which people interact with the Twitter service. Some of the results, which follow below, were rather surprising.
How We Gathered Data
We used the Twitter API to monitor the public feed and capture data on 37,248 tweets over a 24 hour period. We had usable data after about 2 hours, but wanted to let the program run overnight to remove any geographic biases due to timezones. It is interesting to note, though, that the top ten results basically didn't change after the first couple of hours -- though a couple of services swapped positions. That suggests that for the most part, people probably interact with Twitter in the same methods on either end of the globe.
Because we ran our script on a shared host, we limited our script to running at 60 second intervals and grabbed the 20 tweets listed in the public feed every 60 seconds. Since there many have been more than 20 tweets each minute we probably missed a handful of them (if there were less than 20, we only grabbed the new ones). Even so, our 37k is enough data to draw conclusions from.
The script that we used to do this was created for us by developer Kelli Shaver, who also compiled the data for the PDF report linked to later in this post.
The Results
Let's get right down to it. One trend that carried over from our November sampling, was that the web continues to be the #1 way in which people post to Twitter. It accounted for 56% of all tweets that we recorded. IM and txt (SMS message), which were also popular in November, remained popular, accounting for 8% and 5% of all tweets respectively.
But that's where the similarities end. Twitterific, which once ruled Twitter alone as the most popular 3rd party client, suddenly has company at the top. Twhirl now serves slightly more tweets than Twitterific, though both account for about 7% of the total. Snitter, which we found served 4% of tweets last November, has fallen out of favor and is now just the 15th most popular method of interacting with the service; it accounts for less than 1% of the tweets we recorded.
Below is the a list of the top 20 ways we saw people tweet and a graph showing the Twittersphere share of the top 10 post methods:
- Web 56% (20734)
- IM 8% (2975)
- Twhirl 7% (2754)
- Twitterrific 7% (2462)
- TXT 5% (1683)
- Twit 3% (1182)
- TwitterFox 2% (1114)
- movatwitter 2% (718)
- P3:PeraPeraPrv 1% (459)
- Netvibes 1% (266)
- TwitBin 1% (260)
- Twitter Tools 1% (222)
- TwitterPod 0% (159)
- TwitterIrcGateway 0% (152)
- Snitter 0% (147)
- BeTwittered 0% (106)
- Tweetr 0% (95)
- NatsuLion 0% (84)
- Facebook 0% (79)
- PocketTweets 0% (70)
Key Takeaways
Some of the main things we learned from this study:
- Twitter.com is good enough for the majority of Twitter users. Though clearly the API has enriched the service (142 different post services identified in 24 hours! -- and that doesn't include non-client uses of the API such as the polling startups we covered yesterday), the service is still bringing the majority of its users to its site. That potentially bodes well for some type of ad based monetization down the road.
- Twitter users are early adopters (that's not something we learned from this study, but something we already knew anecdotally), and early adopters are also often iPhone users. It's probably important to note that unless you're using an iPhone specific Twitter client like PocketTweets or iTweet from your iPhone, those tweets are counted under "web."
- For all the press that FriendFeed got last week for allowing people to post replies directly to Twitter, it was still 65th on our list and registered barely a fraction of total tweeting activity. Some analysts think FriendFeed is a threat to Twitter's existence, but remember that 56% of users still interact with Twitter on the main site, and Twitter makes up 44% of activity on FriendFeed. So which service is really more reliant on the other?
- There are a ton of Twitter clients out there. We saw 142 different ways to interact with Twitter in just 24 hours of monitoring the site's public feed. That's an amazing amount of activity on their API, and their application ecosystem is growing every day. Clearly, Twitter has struck a nerve with developers and users alike.
- We saw a large number of foreign language clients that we didn't see in November (especially from Asian countries). This is most likely due to that fact that we monitored the public feed this time around, while in November we looked at tweets from the contacts of just a handful of users -- and thus had an unavoidable language bias built in.
- We also saw a growth in posting from non-client outside sources such as Facebook, Netvibes, and yes, FriendFeed.
You can download our raw data (the full list of post methods that we logged) here (PDF).
What else do you think these stats tell us? How do you post to Twitter? Let us know in the comments below.
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Thanks. Just started twittering and was wanting to find a good twitter client.
Twhirl is the best I've seen. You miss a lot using the web, because it doesn't update automatically. Twhirl lets you filter tweets and makes replying and directs a breeze. It rocks.
I just started using twitter as well and have been using twitterfox to feed my fix, sounds like Twhirl might have more of the options I'm looking for.
Via web or on the Twitter site is ok, but it doesn't auto update the stream, you have to refresh. Via phone is ok if you have 10 thumbs, but do check your provider, as you may be charged by the message.
I tested two clients over a period of days. Twitterific worked well for the most part, but was prone to frequent errors in the data stream. The feature set is also quite limited.
My favorite at the moment is Twhirl. It has a nice feature set. Lots of configuration options and doesn't have the ads and errors like Twitterific.
So final answer, Twhirl is the clear winner of the ones that I've tested so far.
I post to Twitter in a variety of ways: Netvibes (Which auto-updates every minute or so), SMS Txt, Twitterberry (client for blackberry), Directly on twitter.com, and a few other ways that I can't think of right now. Twitter is great because its accessible many different ways on many different platforms. If I need to shout something to the general public or my friends, twitter is never far away.
I still try to get people in my life to adopt twitter, but its been an uphill battle. How do you get non-early adopter types and "normals" to use twitter?
i recently started using twhirl and loving it...it has lots of interesting shortcuts that i use quite often...nice article...
Tweeters are twitts! Who would waste their time doing this stuff?
I have tried various Twitter clients but Twirl is the best.
It's too bad that the "web" stats couldn't be broken into the full site vs. m.twitter.com
I didn't start twittering until I signed up for FriendFeed. So yeah, I think FF is not a threat to Twitter. They've got more of a symbiotic thing going on.
As another alternative, Gridjit.com (I'm the developer) acts as a visualization tool / (very) simple web client.
i use tiny twitter on my mobile... nice
I usually do all of my twitter posting through Twitterrific but if I'm out and about I'll use SMS to update.
Twitter is the perfect example of how a Web 2.0 service should run, build an API that developers can build great applications around so that users can use the service whenever and however they would like.
Twitter is really going places and it is one heck of a great service.
I'd like to know what other languages are found on Twitter, other than English.
I'd also like to know the breakdown of where twitterers are from (country-wise).
have four twitter accounts. two in use. use one nearly exclusively.
main account is 99.9 percent of all updates. follows several thousand streams, used daily.
100 percent of those updates are via web interface (twitter.com).
other account is for private/family use/primary monitoring of select individuals based on set criteria, and is tied to cell phone, therefore capable of update via sms. rarely update that account at all, but when I do, probably 50% come from my phone. random thoughts, notes to self, proverbial BS, etc...
do not have or seem to want or need any installations of api's or other means of updating.
have myspace and facebook accounts, do not use often.
have mybloglog, hardly ever log in.
not enough time online. that time is spent mostly (if for social networking) on twitter.com. not much time or interest in other communities or ways to update.
one exception, regular use of tweetscan.com for monitoring of various keywords. occasional use of hashtags for same.
that's my profile.
thanks for asking, good work reporting on interesting statistics.
thank you.
@jesatiu
I primarily use Twhirl (thanks to a tip from MarshallK) these days, and sporadically post from my phone. On my phone though, I have notifications turned off about half of the time so posting, without the ability to see the responses, isn't as much fun or as productive.
steveballmer is a twuhnutcase...hehehe
Josh makes a great point...
people have said that "coming into the tweetspace with an agenda rather than coming in to participate in what's already happening" is a, or at least can be, a mistaken approach...
people have also said that "simply posting updates without any context or rhyme/reason to the flow of conversation(s) is akin to standing in the middle of a theatre or supermarket and simply shouting..."
while i only agree that there really aren't any "rules" there are, as in any good society, functional sets of behaviours that are just good manners...
so it's ok to just update a random thing from the phone at times...i throw out what's been labelled as "fortune cookie wisdom" from time to time...totally off topic(s), etc...
...but to really be 'in the tweet of the moment' one must be there...do that...ya know?
for those about to tweet...we salute you!
night all...sleep well, is late in the midwest...this gatekeeper of my own domain has had a long day...
hmmm, interesting to see this multitude of methods for reading/updating/viewing Twitter but is this not a bit of a problem for the multitude of non-early adopters?
I think we can all accept that anyone who reads RWW is an early adopter. We're comfortable enough to try, and trial, a multitude of different systems to find the advantages/disadvantages.
But is this many options holding back widespread adoption? Most non-tech savvy people don't have the time/inclination to try keep up with the new services being offered online. let alone if they're being offered 142 different methods (see above) to access ONE of the services, is this not a turn-off?
I'm a twitter fan, don't get me wrong. I'm also a big fan of the anything web-related. As the mobile industry argues for a reduction in the number of mobile OS's to reduce confusion, is there not a similar reduction required here?
Also, great to see the stats though. However, am I reading this correctly - you were reading the full feed of EVERY tweet on Twitter?
I.e. 37,248 tweets in 24 hours.
so 1,552 tweets in an hour
so 26 tweets per minute.
Is this not a tiny number considering it's meant to be worldwide stats?
Obviously you're missing all the direct mails. Any estimations of what this totals? If it's large, is twitter not just a(nother) method of the status in IM, and we should all just use that for the very same thing (which is what most non-techies use anyway)?
I'm hoping I'm just mis-reading the stats (I've only had two hours sleep :).
Great site, keep it up!
i'd be interested to see this info broken down by category... like web, mobile client (pockettweets, hahlo etc), desktop (twhirl, twitterrific).
@steveballmer thanks for the compliment. i love being called a twit.
@kyle i do things like post a song lyric of the day to twitter (via @lotd) and that gets a lot of my friends into twitter because it's an activity that we all enjoy
the thing about this data that surprises me is the low % of updates via text messaging. i suspect that well over half of my updates are done via text messaging
Glad to see Twhirl up there. It's a great client, it has actually made using the Twitter.com site a painful experience for me.
I have been using http://ping.fm for about a month now. It is really a super application, it support just about every form of access including email.
@Neal McQ: It's not every tweet sent in 24 hours, just a large representative sample. We queried the public feed every minute for 24 hours -- since the public feed only shows the last 20 tweets, we were only grabbing those 20 tweets -- so if 100 tweets happen each minute, we were only grabbing 20% of them, etc. If less than 20 new tweets appeared, we made sure to only grab the new ones (to avoid duplicates). The reason you got a number of 26 per minute is I think we accidentally let the script run a bit longer than 24 hours (about 27). Even so, the data is pretty sound as a random representative sample -- it's just not every tweet.
The reason we only ran the script once per minute, rather than more often (which would have netted closer to the full number of tweets) was that we ran this script on a shared hosting account -- not on RWW's own servers. So we wanted to keep it from sucking up too many resources. :)
Great post and nice research
I am not sure if you accounted for this - but I use my iPhone to do 50% of my tweets - they are mostly via the Safari browser so it look like you count them in the "web" category when they are actually in more of a "mobile" category
Perhaps there is a subset that can be broken out of the web category for mobile so it doesn't look as big
just a thought ...
For those linux users out there, there's gTwitter but it doesn't seem nearly as functional as the Mac and Windows apps out there.
Nice round up about Twitter client usage here, Marshall. I'm a twhirl user myself by way of Sam Lawrence.
I second @ahockley's curiosity about the percentage of web traffic that is from m.twitter.com. I'd also love to see a similar breakdown on the Twitter API usage!
I've been using Twitter for over a year with almost 3000 "tweets" to my name, and I still use the Web client. Why not? I've tried some of the desktop apps, but they just suck. The whole point is that Twitter is a Web app. I use Gmail online, I use Google Docs online.. why do I want offline apps? The point of Web apps is that I can use them all through one great client: the Web browser :)
I've used a number of those but mostly rely on Twhirl, Twitterberry or the web (and most recently itweet) depending on where I am and what I'm doing.
I still have a hard time keeping up with the stream and find that optimizing it is time consuming (not that reading/posting isn't ;)
It's nice to see Digsby at #24 only two weeks after launching. We help you manage all your IM, email, and social network accounts from one easy to use application.
http://www.digsby.com
(Shameless plug but appropriate considering the post)
I use google talk and netvibes to twit!
I've only been a member of Twitter for more than 3 months now..and I must say I'm really hooked on it..I find it really fun reading other members' updates..^^
Nice round up about Twitter client usage here, Marshall. I'm a twhirl user myself by way of Sam Lawrence.
I second @ahockley's curiosity about the percentage of web traffic that is from m.twitter.com. I'd also love to see a similar breakdown on the Twitter API usage!
For logging odometer readings and arrivals
and departures,
I use Twitterberry 99% of the time.
Bit disappointed not to see Hahlo.com somewhere in that list. I know (based on my Google Analytics) that, on average, about 1000 updates are sent from Hahlo each day. But I guess most of them fell through the cracks as you explained above with the limit of only getting the last 20 tweets in the public timeline.
Also, this might have been mentioned, but the number of updates from "web" is not just the updates from twitter.com, but also include m.twitter.com and any third party apps that don't have a 'source' set up.
Nice post. Good to see some data on the most popular ways to use Twitter. Heres a handy list with urls to the various clients.
http://wtips.blogspot.com/2007/04/twitter-tools.html
I'm also sorry not to see Dean's Hahlo.com client on this list - it's easily the most elegant and efficient iPhone web app client for Twitter, which is important for those of us who don't prefer to jailbreak the iPhone.
Interesting analysis. I've been trying out Twitterberry, but it isn't working for some reason. I usually update from the web browser on my blackberry, so it shows up as coming from the web even though I'm sending it from my mobile device.
@Dean: Hahlo was actually the 21st most used method, so just missed being on the top 20, but still one of the more popular Twitter clients.
Do not forget that there are several programs like gtwitter or twitux that identify themselves as "web".
Started out on the web, then moved to IM. Then to TwitBin, then to twitterfox. Started using Twhirl about a month ago and have stuck with it so far.
I think that it's all based on efficiency for me. Desktop clients make it easier for me to follow and less distracting when I need to focus.
I've used SMS/Text a few times, but I use twitter predominantly during the day, at the office, I rarely use a computer after work anymore, so text is for special occassions.
I'm very interested in Digsby as it would integrate my IM client and Twitter, hoping that I Can figure out how to make it connect to MSN.
@thepunk
It should be noted that some clients report as "Web" such as Twitterberry, the Blackberry client a few posters have referred to above - I use it for about 75% of my tweets.
Hello folks,
may be of your interest.
I quickly done a small java program to send my skype activity into my twitter account (data portability pb)
http://code.google.com/p/skypetotwitter/
check the result
http://twitter.com/nmaisonneuve
don't hesitate to send your feedback!
I have tried a couple of twitter apps but now only use Twhirl. It went down last week and I had to use the web and it was definitely not the same. Judging by the number of tweets when twhirl twunked, I was not alone. Thanks for collecting and sharing this data. It is informative.
Haven't used any Twitter clients yet but will give Twhirl a whirl having read the above comments.
Many people follow Twitter inadvertently without ever joining in themselves, via Facebook. My tweets show up on my profile and many FB friends comment on what I'm up to without become tweeters themselves.
...........
It would be interesting to see how the figures varied for DMs.
I have a bunch of things (servers) that send me a twitter message once a day by DM... using API calls I've written in cURL.
Twitter is a SUPERB aggregator for me of that kind of info...
... but given the nature, it will never appear in my public timeline :-)
If anyone wants source code, DM me as MarkHarrisonUK on Twitter :-)
Ketu mund ti shikoni statistikat e web faqes
I twittered almost exclusively via GTalk until the other day when I downloaded Digsby - now it's all from there (still IM). On rare occasion I will send tweets by SMS. Oh, and now anything I tweet also updates my Facebook status, so I'm twittering more ...
I'd like to kindly welcome any developer of Twitter add-ons, tools and services to send a tweet @twtooltrack, the Twitter account I maintain to track Twitter stuff. In the sidebar of @twtooltrack you'll also find a link to the Twitter news radar, a list of 70+ Twitter-related blogs and search feeds. Welcoming your feedback.
For anyone looking for a richer experience for a Twitter application running Windows, checkout Witty Twitter which is a Windows WPF application (requires .Net 3.0 or .Net 3.5 to be installed).
More information about it here:
http://keithelder.net/blog/archive/2008/04/05/The-New-ClickOnce-Version-of-Witty-Twitter.aspx
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