How many people use Twitter?
After a several month lapse, I’ve been sucked back into the Twitter vortex. When set up in the right way – which will differ for everyone – Twitter is a great way to get a constant stream of news, links, tid bits of randomness, and nastily entertaining little squabbles across the strange interwebs. I’ve found a nice balance of people I follow among those I know, those I admire or enjoy keeping up with in the online world, and a certain cross-section of random folk that I’ve stumbled across.
I’m reminded of a story I picked up from Mathew Ingram called “If the news is important, it will find me”. In essence, I think Twitter is a great filter for allowing news to come to you without taking a lot of energy to go out and find it yourself. It’s all about tweaking and adjusting the filters to just the right frequencies.
My renewed interest in Twitter led me to think about how many people are using it these days. I then stumbled across a post on Twitter Facts that talks about a slowdown in Twitter’s growth from 3,500 new users a day to just 750 a day nowadays. Twitdir is used as the source, and if you believe Twitdir, the number of current users hovers around one million.
This doesn’t feel right to me because of the pretty wide exposure, buzz, and popularity of Twitter in the blogosphere, and for a few other reasons as well. Robert Scoble, one of Twitter’s most prolific users and most popular profiles to follow, has about 17,000 followers. If there were one million Twitter users, that would mean that Scoble is followed by about 1.7% of that group. That’s actually a pretty enormous figure, even for the Scobleizer! According to Twitterholic, Barack Obama, Jason Calacanis, and Leo Laporte are in the same range, with between 15,000 to 20,000 followers.
And speaking of Twitterholic, a commenter on Twitter Facts points out that Twitterholic claims that there are at least 11 million Twitter users, citing this page as an example.
And just this morning, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger says that “Twitter has grown exponentially in it’s use by tens of millions of people around the world.”
Turning over to Alexa, we see that Twitter is currently ranked 580, with yesterday’s number rolling in at 428. The trend line is very healthy, and overall it’s very clear that Twitter’s traffic numbers are pretty enormous.
So what gives? How many people are using Twitter?
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March 31st, 2008 at 11:17 am
[…] How many people use Twitter? […]
March 31st, 2008 at 11:57 am
The problem (and the difference may be) in defining what “use” means in this context.
-Use could mean have an account.
-Use could mean have an account and have posted at least once.
-Use could mean have an account and have posted in the last month.
-Use could mean have an account and have posted in the last day (or week)
I suspect the numbers for those definitions would vary all over the map.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
More people than show up in the Twitter search option. I know several people who have yet to see their Twitter IDs be entered in the database. They’re there; they’re tweeting; but if someone searches for them or their interest areas, the searchers will not find them. Twitter really needs to get these kind of glitches fixed ASAP!
March 31st, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Brian, great points all !
My assumption in asking the question was looking for all-time registered users, but I’d love to see all of the stats you mention.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
You know Kay, that reminds me that many times over the last week or so (I’m talking at least 10 times) I’ve clicked an “@USERNAME” link within twitter, expecting to hit a profile page, but instead brought up a “no user found” response.
Overall the site and service works great. These are some of the “good problems” of scaling for massive growth.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Thanks for the pointers to the Twitterfacts blog.
I think the guys at Twitterholic make a mistake by confusing the Twitter ID with the total number of Twitter accounts, have a look at a new post at the Twitterfacts blog : http://twitterfacts.blogspot.com/2008/04/twitter-ids-and-number-of-twitter-users.html
March 31st, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Very interesting Bruno, thank you !
Wonder if Ev or anyone else at Twitter has made a public statement recently talking about what general ballpark they’re in?
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
[…] a sentence, Twitter is a group of millions who are “tweeting” and waiting for @replies. […]
May 4th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
[…] Berlin, E. (2008). Online media cultist. Retrieved April 28, 2008, Web site: http://onlinemediacultist.com/2008/03/31/how-many-people-use-twitter. […]