If you use your statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost, for support, rather than illumination (with thanks to Winston Churchill for another great quote), then today’s dueling Twitter reports will leave you reeling.
Is Twitter growth accelerating? Or has it peaked? We describe two apparently widely disparate studies below — take your pick of and tell us your opinion! Or you could just wait until the next set of studies comes out…
Twitter Growth Accelerates!
First, the glass-half-full report. WebProNews has been looking at Twitter’s growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. According to this source, which cites data drawn from the Twitter API, December’s numbers showed an increase in tweeting frequency, as Twitter surpassed a billion tweets in a month. In January, total tweets sent were the largest on record, increasing at 6.34% over December–which they do admit is the second-lowest increase for the last twelve months.
Still, new registrations saw a 32% month-over-month increase, the largest since April, and the most registrations ever in a single month at 9.4 million. These numbers were supplied by Matthew Daines, the lead developer for Twellow. He also provided a series of graphs, based on data from the Twitter API, which are reproduced in the WebProNews article.
Twitter Growth is Slowing!
A separate study by RJMetrics, reported in SF Gate, downloaded 2 million tweets from about 50,000 users over the last few months of 2009, and found that by year-end Twitter had just over 75 million user accounts, about 35 million less than the previously cited report. According to this report, the monthly rate of new user accounts peaked in July 2009 and is currently running at around 6.2 million new (the article is not clear on the time frame, but implies we are talking about December). This rate is about 20% below July’s peak rate, which directly contradicts the conclusions drawn by the WebProNews data.
RJMetrics also determined that about 25% of accounts have no followers and about 40% of accounts have never sent a single Tweet. Also, “About 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times” and “Only about 17% of registered Twitter accounts sent a Tweet in December 2009, an all-time-low.”
Your analysis is off base. Compare the first two graphs in the actual RJMetrics report with the graph from WebProNews you have displayed here. Pay close attention to the actual months and data points for each. You will see they are entirely consistent.
You will need to look at the RJMetrics report found here and not just at the SFGate analysis:
http://themetricsystem.rjmetrics.com/2010/01/26/new-data-on-twitters-users-and-engagement/
What you are failing to point out is that the RJMetrics data run only through December, while the WebProNews data is through January. Also, the WebProNews report specifically states the total registration numbers do not account for suspended or abandoned accounts, but the RJMetrics report states that it does, thus the “35 million less” difference. But here you are comparing January WebProNews numbers (110 million) to December RJMetrics (75 million). You should have stated the difference is 25 million, so it appears around 25% of accounts have been suspended or abandoned.
Also, you have compared the decline in December new registrations from the RJMetrics report (6.2 million) to the increase in January from the WebProNews report (9.4 million), a major flaw in your analysis.
If you read the conclusions in the RJMetrics report, they point out that “Twitter is still growing like a rocketship” and “with 75 million total accounts, an active userbase of around 20% still leaves around 15 million highly active tweeters.”
I wholeheartedly agree with your Winston Churchill quote.
Cheers,
Matthew Daines
Hi Matt -
Thanks for taking the time to provide the link to the report and
correct some of the statements in the story. We usually try to find
the original report; I didn’t try hard enough before writing this post
and am slightly red-faced as a result.
That said, my take was inspired by the over-dramatic headlines we
continue to see from various news outlets. Just as last year the media
was over-dramatizing Twitter’s growth, we have seen many headlines
recently over-dramatizing the slow down in growth.
As your study shows, there are many data points yet to come on that trend line!
Best, Tonia