Traffic on Twitter has increased 22-fold in the past 12 months,
according to Hitwise, which analyses internet usage, making it the
fastest growing site in the UK.
During May 2009, www.twitter.com ranked as the 38th most visited
website in the UK and the fifth most visited social network. Just
one year ago, in May 2008, it was the 969th most visited website
and 84th most visited social network.
Robin Goad, director of research at Hitwise, said: "The
noticeable thing about Twitter's growth is that the vast majority
of it - 93% in fact - has occurred during 2009. If anything, the
service is even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only
measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If people accessing
their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third-party
applications (such as Twitterific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were
included, the numbers could be even higher."
According to Hitwise, Twitter has become a key source of traffic
to other websites. During May 2009, Twitter was the 30th-biggest
source of traffic for other sites in the UK, accounting for 1 in
every 350 visits to a typical website. Over half of this traffic
(55.9%) is sent to other content-driven online media sites, such as
social networks, blogs, and news and entertainment websites.
However, only 9.5% of Twitter's downstream traffic is sent to
travel, business, finance sites and online retailers.
Earlier this week, Furniture store
Habitat was caught in a Twitter marketing gaffe that saw the
chain advertising its goods in postings about the political unrest
in Iran.