Is Twitter Losing its Following?

Made Essential Reading on 03 February 2010 Felix Hemsley

Certain questions have always been circling around Twitter and its future:

How is it funded?
How long can it last?
Will everyone get bored?

My opinions vary from day to day on the first question, but for the latter two, my answers have always been the same; It will last for as long as it serves a purpose not bettered by another option and so long as people are still communicating in this world, there will always be a story to tell.

These views of Twitter being an indefinite platform have recently come under scrutiny from researchers throwing wild statistics around. I recently commented on the matter of content creation which ties in very closely here, and backs up my new musings.

According to data from RJMetrics, Twitter finished out 2009 with over 75 million accounts, with a rate of 6.2 million accounts set-up each month. Of them, 25% have no followers, 40% have never sent a single tweet, and 80% have sent fewer than 10 tweets.

Now logic would tell me that those who have sent fewer than 10 tweets, probably did the majority of those during the ‘Twitter boom’ in July 2009, thus 80% of accounts are likely to now be less engaged with the activity. That is a huge proportion to be talking about, and would be a large chunk of the apparent ‘decline’ that may refer to. Surely what we have now, and increasingly day by day, is a more focussed, more active Twitterati? So whilst the total number of tweets may have decreased from the peak, and many members have become ‘inactive’, has anything actually been lost, or has something actually been gained? Less noise, more harmony?

In various capacities, I have been involved with Twitter since early 2008 and have only noticed growth and increased relevance, along with improving application and functionality. So has Twitter usage decreased since July 2009; Yes. Has this had a detrimental effect; No!

As with all technology, adoption is an ongoing process which helps it to evolve in an organic way, meeting new requirements and needs. We can speculate and argue for an eternity on whether Twitter is here to stay, but people will always want to communicate, Word of Mouth is an ancient human activity, we’re just finding new ways of doing it!