Well, Twitter has done it again. Within a few short months this relative newbie on the social media scene has gone from having a modest following to being a decidedly mainstream Web attraction. Of course, this rush of new followers probably would not have occurred without rampant media exposure and an army of high-profile celebrity users. And getting featured by Oprah doesn’t hurt…
The result of all this attention, according to just-released April 2009 U.S. Comscore MMX data, was another huge jump in visitors to Twitter.com during the month. Its 17 million U.S. visitors in April represents an 83% gain vs. March and a 3,000% gain vs. year ago. In fact, the past two months have seen such a flood of traffic to Twitter.com that it has more than quadrupled its audience during that brief period of time, literally unprecedented growth for a site whose audience already numbers in the millions.
See Twitter’s incredible growth curve over the past year below - the textbook version of a “hockey stick”:
What remains to be seen is whether or not this inundation of new users will remain loyal to the technology once they’ve tried it. Much like a new product on the supermarket shelves, people are willing to give Twitter a taste to see if the experience matches the advertising (or in this case, the media buzz). The question, of course, is how many of these trial Tweeters will convert into regular, long-term users. Some will do so after their first experience, while others will probably take awhile to acclimate. Some probably won’t jump in head first right away, but will eventually give in as people in their existing social networks adopt the technology. And, some will try but will not become repeat users. Ultimately, only time will tell what Twitter’s loyal user adoption curve looks like and Comscore will be here to report what transpires…