Most of us would be happy in this economy for any growth that occurred between Feb of 2008 and Feb of 2009. 10 percent would be fine. 50% would be amazing. 100% growth gets you rock star status. So if you are Twitter and Nielsen gave you the news that your subscriber base grew 1,392% in that period you may need to change your shorts. Ok, so maybe that’s a little too graphic but that is a pretty ridiculous number even if you don’t make one red cent while doing it (had to throw that in there;-)).
From a report on cnet, here are the results of the Top 5 fastest growing, as Nielsen refers to them, ‘member community destinations’ for the February to February time period.
As with most data there may be questions raised. For instance a common number thrown around about how many Facebook users there are is 175 million but in the US it apparently is 65 million. You don’t see that number quite as often although it is still impressive. The members of the top 5 are quite a bit smaller than even Twitter and 2 of them are not even social media sites. That’s just minor stuff though.
One area I would like to see more detail on is the age ranges that Twitter has their greatest success. I was admittedly surprised at Twitter’s claim that the largest user group of Twitter is aged 34-49. That would appear to be at least an indication that the reason for Twitter’s success is business related. No evidence of that one just an educated guess.
The other element of growth that is making Twitter investors twiddy (that’s giddy in Twitter speak) is the use of mobile phones and devices to access the application. 735,000 unique visitors did so in January of this year. In addition, on just AT&T and Verizon alone there were 812,000 users accessing Twitter via text message.
While some people have even said that Twitter has jumped the shark it appears that even if they did there are a lot people following them despite that prediction. What will happen over the next year is going to be interesting to watch when you consider that even the mighty Facebook has made recent changes that have tipped a hat to the Twitter model. Since imitation is the greatest form of flattery that should be enough to motivate Twitter to have another year of quadruple digit growth. Tweet that!
