louisgray.com - Latest Comments in As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

StevenWillis — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:29:22 -0000

I posted last month on my blog about Twitter and why I started using it and today I find I don't go long without setting up Twhirl to see what is going on. I think Twhirl is why I keep going back, but the people I have found to follow are the reason I haven't lost interest.

Twitter may of reached the tipping point. I think a combination of factors is coming together for them. The platform seems to be stable now and users are spending time tweeting about events and not Fail Whales. The number of users is growing and exposing even more to the service. And for me the most important part is the users themselves.

Like I said before, I have been able to find users that are knowledgeable and post interesting stuff.
When the Olympics were going on, I found people covering different aspects of the events. Now during the political campaigns, I see posts about issues.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Nicolai — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:10:11 -0000

And a good one at that.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Nicolai — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:33:15 -0000

Both sites are counted - that is, if the term for beta.friendfeed.com is "site". I just checked it.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

netik — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:50:36 -0000

Gee, you think that's because Twitter -bought- summize and is busily integrating features from Summize into the main site?

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Anthony Farrior — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:51:55 -0000

If we haven't already, making twitter accounts to announce our latests posts is another great way to use twitter.
Great, I've turned into a Twitter commercial...

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Jesse Stay — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:42:54 -0000

I was wondering if that was the case :-) I'll have to check out some
of the other Laconi.ca instances and do a follow up post to yours.
Great findings though Louis!

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Louis Gray — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:37:51 -0000

Pete, your point on Summize's traffic pointing to Twitter, and
therefore accounting for a good chunk of the service's rise in Web
traffic, is undoubtedly spot on. Thanks for bringing that up, as I,
and everyone else so far, had overlooked that fact.

Of course, if the Summize integration were to account for Twitter's
growth shown here, then it calls the entire premise into doubt, with
the exception of the pronounced decline for the competition.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Nicolai — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:32:00 -0000

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Dennis Goedegebuure — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:46:39 -0000

I think
Twitter still accelerated their growth.
http://siteanalytics.compet...

The growth of Twitter outpaces the number of Summize

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Pete Flint — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:18:54 -0000

I think a big part of the growth is actually from the summize acquisition which now redirects to the twitter domain. See the growth here. http://siteanalytics.compet... The summize traffic growth halts as twitter now gets credit for the searches. You add the organic growth from twitter search/summize to the steady organic growth of the stable twitter and you see the nice pop in traffic. I think the traffic from this acquisition is accountable for the majority of twitter's recent growth.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

evbart — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:04:27 -0000

Identi.ca was defintely hype. Twitter has gone main stream for me, just check the #Ike tag and see al lthe different people on it.

Yammer to me is the most interesting recent development. I'd love to see those features and stability on the Twitter platform, but I'll run them both side by side for now.

Heard a rumor that Twhirl was going to allow you to manage both from their app.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Kevin Fox — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:22:30 -0000

I once heard Garyvee say "wait till Oprah gets on Twitter" it may just be a matter of time....

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

brianjesse — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:43:14 -0000

The article presents the data without explaining that Identi.ca's users can splinter off into smaller networks and stay connected to the mothership.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Wayne Schulz — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:29:45 -0000

Friendfeed became (to me) over-run with bloggers and their hanger ons. Maybe I'm not following the right people, but a few hundred bacon posts accompanied by a thousand comments (half of which get buried) just really isn't holding my interest.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Louis Gray — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:13:16 -0000

Jesse, your comment to Identi.ca on Saturday was one of the pieces that prompted me to check this out.

Via: http://friendfeed.com/e/f0e...

You wrote, “Is it just me or has identi.ca really lost activity lately?”

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Louis Gray — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:11:21 -0000

Yes, the federated nature of identi.ca makes calculating all their users difficult. But what this data does show is that the most visible, most discussed instance of laconi.ca has decreased month over month.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

brianjesse — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:02:14 -0000

@Jesse -- At the MicroBlogging summit on Friday, Leo Laporte mentioned that he now had around 5000 MicroBloggers at http://twit.army.tv

Those people can "Follow" others at of any of the approximately 150-200 federated openmicroblogging services, and a given service could be running Laconi.ca or OpenMicroBlogger software. This is similar to how e-mail, FTP works -- you can choose your software as long as it adheres to the specification.

@nikan -- I agree with you (and Jesse apparently is coming around) -- it's not correct to say that identi.ca is dying without mentioning the freedom its users enjoy.

-- Brian

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

nikan — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:01:50 -0000

I don't think it is correct to include identi.ca in the comparison. Identi.ca is part of a federation. The aggregated population of all laconi.ca users would be a more appropirate metric.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Louis Gray — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:55:25 -0000

I too am a bigger fan of FriendFeed than Twitter. That's been clear from my comments all year. But I see no reason that Twitter must lose for FriendFeed to win.

Also, we know Compete.com statistics are somewhat suspect, but it's clear, at least to me, that the big user growth at FriendFeed has slowed, while Twitter has renewed. The stats don't have to be right, but I think they do nail the trend.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Louis Gray — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:51:50 -0000

I tend to see FriendFeed and Twitter having much less of an overlap than some do. I continue to be a staunch supporter and big user of FriendFeed. But Twitter is a core ingredient of what makes FriendFeed go. That said, I definitely feel that the alternative services, like Plurk and Identi.ca, have lost momentum.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Dave Knox — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:44:28 -0000

Louis - great analysis. Even though I have a presence on Friendfeed and Plurk, I was never really able to get into them. They were merely substitutes when Twitter was acting up. Based on these numbers, it sounds like my story is the same as many others.

In my opinion, Twitter surviving and flourishing is best for the microblogging industry. More and more of my friends are start to come around on Twitter. But if they have to decide between Twitter, Plurk, etc then they are more likely to not try anything at all. One service being the go-to service is best for adoption of the technology

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Jesse Stay — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:15:30 -0000

Brian, your stat is very interesting to hear. I still think the future of microblogging isn't necessarily in these services themselves, but in the individual hosted solutions that will be installed at corporations and more. Twitter can't do that.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Jesse Stay — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:11:28 -0000

I'd love to see other laconi.ca instances in this study - I'm curious if traffic for laconi.ca has just been spread thin to other instances, rather than back to Twitter. Examples like Twit Army, for instance. I know a few people that have moved over there. Interesting study though.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Thomas Hawk — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:43:17 -0000

Twitter doesn't have pictures. FriendFeed does. Pictures are pretty. I like my microblogging experience to be both text and visually based. I'm biased of course though as a photographer. I far prefer FriendFeed over Twitter. But I was a little surprised seeing compete's last month comparison between FriendFeed and Twitter. Beyond the pictures issue, FriendFeed seems to be such a superior platform due largely to how they present conversations around posts and media in ways that Twitter does not. And they do have a great deal of momentum and enough of a strong user base to grow their service at this point. I used to think that FF would surpass Twitter within 6 months. Now I'm not as sure.

Re: As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Mark Evans — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:18:39 -0000

Like STM above, I'm an avid Twitter user while I've abandoned Plurk and identi.ca. Twitter is where the party is happening so why leave for another micro-blogging service with little or no action. That said, in an ideal world, I'd like to see Pownce do better given it's a good service.

As well, I'm surprised Friendfeed is seeing flat growth given it's still getting a lot of buzz.