Twitter's Growth Slows Dramatically
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.
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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
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
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.
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.
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: how many RL friends vs. companies vs. celebrities vs. aggregator accounts.
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.
I think model is yet to evolve.
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
I think the model is still starting
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?
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/
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/
Good - I don't want Twitter to become Facebook.
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There are only so many twits who tweet.
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.
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.
"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 :)
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.
@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
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?
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.
Is anyone truly surprised by this dude!
RT
www.online-anonymity.se.tc
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.
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.
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!
What would the future of social marketing take us?
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.
I heard that bill gates uses twitter now.
Actually... he does use twitter now. Search for him he has 100k+ followers now.
The growth chart is not going in the right direction ...
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
What matters now is quality of content, and value derived from Twitter streams.
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.
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."
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.
I totally disagree.This is not the scenario for today.It has totally changed in the few months.Anyways nice graphical presentation!!
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.
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.
.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.
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.
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.
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.
how can you make anything out if a mess like that? Twitter is the fluid and immediate sharing of thoughts and experiences.
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.
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
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