buzzbishop
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March 21, 2006. The day Twitter was born.
In the past 4 years, the service has exploded into every aspect of popular culture. The immediacy with which it can spread information rivals the of the broadcast news networks. The connections it makes between people has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charity.
But is Twitter successful?
Perhaps for the people that use it, but when you break down the numbers more people are playing Farmville than are registered on Twitter.
And it's not just registrations that matter, the active user base of Twitterville (as author Shel Israel calls the community) is even smaller. Sure, Ashton Kutcher has helped spread the message that Twitter exists and is cool, but the vast number of it's user base still doesn't understand how to make it click.
Barracuda Labs examined usage of Twitter as part of its recently released Barracuda Labs Annual Report, analyzing 19 million Twitter accounts.
Among the findings:
- Only 21 percent of Twitter users are "true Twitter users." That means they have at least 10 followers, are following at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times.
- 17 percent of Twitter users have zero followers
- 34 percent of Twitter users have not tweeted since they created an account
The most shocking finding, however, is that despite continued growth in users, Twitter traffic peaked in July 2009.
This might be attributed to what Barracuda calls Twitter's "Red Carpet Era" when celebrities were driving traffic. It was spring of 2009 when the Ashton vs CNN battle peaked causing Twitter to grow by 20% a month. That rate has crashed back to a 0.31% growth rate. People came, checked it out and then checked out - perhaps accounting for the large number of dormant or small accounts.
Twitter is still growing and, judging by the volume of Tweets flying during the recent SXSWi conference, still a relevant and effective means of communication for 1/5 of it's users. It's the hardcore users that are now driving the traffic making you wonder if Twitter will ever truly cross in to the mainstream of pop culture.
Happy Birthday Twitter, have the good ole days already come and gone?
catch the buzz ... pass it on.
