While a lot of the talk around Twitter is hype and hyperbole and anything else that is based in theory there are some real numbers that Twitter can point to that are hard to ignore. In June, according to comScore as reported by TechCrunch Twitter had 44.5 million visitors to the site. This is a pretty large number on its own, placing it ahead of ESPN and just shy of Craig’s List as well as the BBC’s site. In a pure ranking sense the site now sits at the 52nd largest site in the world. The graph below represents the kind of ‘hockey stick’ growth that most just dream will happen.
These numbers represent visitors not accounts so the number of Twitter users and the number of active accounts are not part of these results. What they do represent however is an increase of 7 million visitors from May to June of this year which is pretty strong. Amazing what a little political mayhem in Iran can do to goose the business fortunes of Internet entrepreneurs in the US.
Twitter must be happy with these numbers for sure, especially the fact that there was a remarkable 1,460% increase in visitors from June of 2008 to June of 2009. So how could this be better? Well, about 20 million of the total 44.5 million visitors are from the US, which means that the international appeal of the service is very strong. The best piece though is that it is estimated that only about ½ of the total Twitter user population actually visit the site. The heaviest users in fact are using a variety of third party apps like TweetDeck to manage their Twitter experience.
So you can talk about all the psychology and community and whatever other ‘ology’ there is about Twitter but at the bottom of all of it are large numbers of visitors and users. These are the things that companies spend money on. You know, pesky numbers and cold hard facts. Now if only Twitter would try to make a little money from all of this ‘success’. It’s getting to the point now that this needs to be the next news coming from the little bird, don’t you think?
