Twitter Still Niche
There are very few communities that are as devoted as the “Twitters”. A lot of people (including me) use Twitter, but how big is it compared to the other major networks? Well according to Heather Hopkins at Hitwise Twitter is still very niche.
On the positive side traffic year on year to Twitter is up 8 fold. In the past three months, visits have more than doubled and traffic continues to climb, up 60% in the past month.
As the following chart from Hitwise illustrates, the growth has been slow and steady with an acceleration in the past few weeks.
Now the bad news. Even with the impressive jump in traffic in the last three months, Twitter is still ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites according to Hitwise.
Yes Twitter is building a loyal user base, but it has a long, long way to go to even crack the top 50 social networking sites. I personally don’t think that Twitter has mainstream potential like MySpace, Facebook or Bebo. Without either mainstream acceptance or rapid growth in the teen/college market I don’t personally see Twitter becoming anything more than a small niche service.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with me?
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Apr 30th, 2008
April 30th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
[…] - Social Media Optimization wrote an interesting post today on Twitter Still NicheHere’s a quick excerptTwitter Still Niche There are very few communities that are as devoted as the “Twitters”. A lot of people (including me) use Twitter, but how big is it compared to the other major networks? Well according to Heather Hopkins at Hitwise Twitter is still very niche. On the positive side traffic year on year to Twitter is up 8 fold. In the past three months, visits have more than doubled and traffic continues to climb, up 60% in the past month. As the following chart from Hitwise illustrates, th […]
April 30th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I think it’ll always remain a niche service because the amount of engagement required to use the service. It takes quite a bit of effort to keep your status up-to-date and I don’t think most people are willing to (or can, due to their jobs) make that kind of commitment.