Only a year ago, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were dead and microblogging would soon replace them. Twitter was supposed to kill blogs because it’s so much simpler to publish one sentence fragment at a time rather than whole thoughts bunched together into what is known in the trade as “paragraphs.”
Today, blogs are doing fine, while Twitter is struggling with flattening growth, at least to its Website Twitter.com (clients like Seesmic and TweetDeck have seen no slowdown). The weakness Twitter has been experiencing in the U.S. since last summer is now finally hitting its worldwide visitor growth as well.
In October, comScore estimates that Twitter had 58.3 million unique visitors worldwide, down from 58.4 million in September. Meanwhile, WordPress.com gained 10 million unique visitors to end the month at 151.8 million—this is after going pretty much nowhere since March, 2009.
Of course, I am using WordPress.com as a proxy for all blogging here (I could have just as easily used Blogger, which is actually bigger with 291.7 million visitors worldwide. And Blogger saw a similar holding pattern since March, with a huge sudden jump of 18.2 million visitors in October
So is blogging back, while microblogging is on the skids? A one-month spike in the popularity of blogs doesn’t tell you much of anything, but in any case it’s the wrong question. Blogging never really went away, and was in fact helped by Twitter, which is becoming the preferred feed reader for many people (thanks to services like Twitterfeed).
And don’t count out microblogging just yet. Twitter is finally rolling out improvements to its site such as Lists and the new Retweet button. Once geo-location features kick in, Twitter’s growth could come back with a vengeance.
Hey Twitter, you done yet?
This is probably the beginning of the decline for twitter.
do they count mobile traffic and apps traffic , widget.. there is so many options to connect to twitter …
Most likely not. Don’t think you can really calculate traffic through apps traffic. It’d be interesting to see if the traffic increased or decreased, but who knows. Either way, it’s a one-month sample size, so I wouldn’t get too worried just yet if I was Twitter.
Yep.
There were just a lot of people to forget that Twitter IS stupid.
there are no stupid services. there are stupid people and the f***ers tend to be loud. Twitter is their megaphone
What about services made by stupid people?
Yes, but there are also useless services, and services that you can’t actually do anything with.
correct ………… just getting momentum to break all records. Once new features kicks in, i toubt there would be any stopping for twitter.
I “toubt” you and your 8 followers on Twitter are set to break any records.
+1
Microblogging like twitter filled with spammers will never ever replace a content-rich blog like wordpress.
Also twitter has tremendous lying problems. One of them is when it reaches the threshold when “people” don’t like to follow other people anymore. Twitter was built unlike facebook wherein adding people doesn’t feel “saturating”
also twitter is becoming boring everyday. Why? NO GAMES!
all the juicy details why Twitter will go down:
http://bit.ly/twitter-1-billion-with-underlying-problems
I think, I agree the points, still do not think twitter will vanish.
I think both have their uses…i.e. for http://styleguidance.com
Blogging is great for long term, and requires building an audience.
Microblogging is great for quick promotions and viral growth.
Twitter is becoming an RSS for blog updates. So this makes sense.
1. Write a blog post
2. Broadcast to followers on Twitter
3. Get a typical 10% – 20% clickthrough from your followers
Agree with Scott_ao. This is standard practice for marketers now. And many Twitter users understand this too, which is why discussions are happening around when/if Twitter will replace email marketing. For me, Email marketing is not nearly as convenient for users as Following in Twitter. The time/organizational commitment is lower, the payoff equal.
well put
I dunno, I think Google Wave will pretty much keep Twitter flat lined for good.
Twitter should have gone public while it had the chance. It seems Facebook is about to go public now.
WTF are you talking about? Go public with -0- revenue? Go back to being a Social Media Expert.
Not a reader of the WSJ aye?
BTW, Erick, I have not seen you online in a while on GTalk. I will be at Twiistup. I hope you are there this year. I will say hello. I am doing well here in California. Much, much better than Canadia. Hope you are doing well too. I don’t read this blog much anymore now that it’s too popular.
Wow, a whole 4 million in revenue = IPO? No.
Todd… First of all, I don’t care who you are. You sound like a cranky bitch. Tone it down. Second, you obviously don’t understand how or why companies choose to go public. Hint: it has nothing to do with current revenues. It has everything to do with revenue potential. Consider Amazon. They only turned a profit a few years ago but have been a public company for several years.
true, Drugstore.com had one of the hottest IPO’s in history and they weren’t makin squat at the time
“I don’t read this blog much anymore now that it’s too popular.”
Kids, this is not an example of a good reason.
Really? Wave is a great collaboration tool but has nothing to do with twitter (I enjoy them both).
Wave doesn’t have any effect on Twitter in the slightest, and why should Twitter have gone public? If they had, they’d just be delisting a couple years from now anyway. They SHOULD have just sold to Microsoft or Google and pocketed the money.
I think wave does have an effect on a potential strategy twitter could have pursued for revenue — the business market.
However, wave, socialtext, yammer, chatter and others have essentially deprived twitter of an early lock-in of collaboration tools. Twitter will now have to fight a bit harder to gain share in the enterprise market.
I agree though, twitter&co should have sold quick for the billion.
Yeah but…
Rather than see Twitter and bloogers as separate entities I think we need to see them as complementary. Twitter has a lot to do with the upswing in Blog hits because Twitter is a great tool for driving trafiic to a blog or to any website for that matter.
Yes, if you look at the graphs there was always a positive relationship between blogging and microblogging. I don’t think I’d visit twitter if links to good articles weren’t there.
These channels are different. There is no need to compare them. They are as they are.
“Microblogging?” Twitter is a “news service” just like blogs, however the number of characters is limited, hence it’s appeal.
I am wondering what MG Siegler has to say about this ?
“I LUB TWITTER”
I block twitters.
I also block twits.
What about the twats?
Twitter – the great service that currently trends #CheatingExcuses, well played sir
Twitter is feeding the internet ecosystem. Just like Blogger.
What about Tumblr? I find Tumblr to be full of clones, everybody just reblogging others stuff.
I agree that Twitter’s growth has probably only helped blogging platforms such as WordPress. In some sense, Twitter has helped people to quickly and easily realize the affect of their voice online. We observe this by being followed, retweeted and listed.
However, I am not sure if it makes sense that Twitter’s growth would start to pick up significantly because of more feature additions. If Twitter wants new users, it will have to convince them as to why use the core platform, which at its heart is all about writing what’s on your mind and following others.
Not sure about all these “twitter is dying, let me show you the webstats”…
It is a platform after all – I think a fairer comparison would really be to look at the actual number of tweets/posts made and track that over a period, tracking web visits doesn’t help here. If I look at my feed, most people don’t post via the web, they use a client. If the number of tweets are starting to decline, then there is a real story.
Agreed.
Also a significant number of tweets that I see include links to articles. It follows that a percentage of those are on WordPress blogs, such as my own. The twitter stats quoted here mean nothing and the reality is that Twitter is very probably giving a second wind to blogs.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
In addition, if that’s just hits to the site, that’s not going to be counting the “hits” from API clients like Seesmic or any of the others so it’s a false comparison
It’s not hits, it’s monthly uniques. So counting app hits isn’t going to change the stats much, as most of you Twitter-using narcissists probably visit the site at least once a month. Time to face the facts — Twitter is going the the way of MySpace.
Comparing is futile imo. Both blogging and microblogging serve different purposes and can/will complement one another.
I’ve always preferred RSS to Twitter. If you have a decent RSS reader with a preview pane, it just cuts out that extra step of clicking a link in the tweet to get to the article.
Surely, it’s only a matter of time before the phishers really start messing with people on Twitter too. Training people to click on bit.ly links is a very, very bad idea. If someone manages to plant a self-re-tweeting tweet on Twitter through some vulnerability, all hell could break loose.
RSS > Twitter
Twitter’s the new RSS. I prefer it to RSS because it broadcasts the publisher’s personality along with their updates. Also RTs introduce me to new twitter feeds I wouldn’t have found otherwise.
It’s like RSS + recommendations.
I don’t follow friends. I follow topics in interest.
Twitter is the perfect promotional tool for blogs, publications, etc. If anything they compliment each other. Without Twitter, you probably wouldn’t have seen blog sites grow. Twitter will also continue to grow, albeit slowly, but it a necessary component to support the widespread visibility of blog sites everywhere. Thank ‘RT’ and trending capabilities for that.
Wrong. The only blogs the see ANY kind of ref traffic from Twitter are tech blogs.
IMHO, “Unique visits” isn’t really a meaningful measurement in terms of trying to determine future/ongoing success. Makes a pretty graph for the VCs though, eh?
I always love how we try to make these illogical comparisions. Just once it would be nice if some of you would take a marketing for eggheads course.. watch that will get me banned..
Just because poetry came along doesn’t mean books went out of style. Blogs give you the ability to tell a story. To share what you are an expert at.. soon you all will wake up and realize your cheapest marketing stradegy is to have your departments blog to posterous, to adsense blooger, to one central blogger.. you will learn that youtube has partner programs as does ustream.. twitter is just the quick chatter.. but you can’t say anything inelligent.. you need I need a quote from this guys feed. I need this guy to call me… blogs are for indepth.. it is why twitter should buy posterous..
Interesting read would love to read more… http://www.cypress.com/
They are different animals. They cater to different attention spans and information appetites.
And it’s why twitter and so-called real-time services won’t kill off RSS readers like Steve Gillmor predicts in “Rest in Peace, RSS.”
This is just web traffic. How many people use Twitter via cellphones and other apps?
Are there any stats on the number of tweets?
I think Twitter users have empowered bloggers by linking to their sites. As Twitter users continue to distribute links from their blogs more people will create their own blogs. Also bloggers can’t get all their thoughts in 140 characters so they will link their posts. It goes both ways though. Bloggers have links to their Twitter accounts which will cause more Twitter usage. They will both grow with the help of each other!
Even though I still use Twitter, it has lost some of its appeal to me ever since every company, TV network and public figure started using it as a self-promotional gimmick
WordPress is going social with Buddy Press. Matt Mullenweg heads to an open source social web via WordPress: and he wll eventually target Facebook.
I use them both. Together. Instead of killing each other all the time, why don’t services integrate with each other. Win, win, no?
Twitter seems fine as an alternative for RSS (let’s face it, it’s all it is)…but blogs are where the real meat of information comes from.
To put it in another way, Twitter is the headlines in a newspaper while blogs are the WHOLE articles.
My question is this: If blogs auto-generate RSS feeds…and you have certain blogs you like reading, WHY use Twitter for updates?
Blogging, social networking, micro-blogging … they’re all incredible products of the communication age. Unfortunately, with the good comes the bad as everyone becomes acclimated and, instead of use there is 99% abuse. Custom, pushed content has long been the future in technology but do you really want to know what someone is thinking about having for dinner on the other side of the country? It’s like everyone is a 17 year-old with keys to a 911, unlimited access to alcohol and no drinking age. Of course you think you’re popular. It will all come into context soon enough.
Hello Erick,
At the blogging website I operate (ChristianBlog.Com) which is the largest Dedicated-Christian Blog Service Provider that exists, we did notice a fair amount of migration of members away from blogging and into tweeting.
However when we presented to our community the offer to build a twitter like service within our existing Services the vast majority of them had no desire to use it. We went ahead and developed it but it hardly ever gets used. While one could argue that it does not get used because of the power of the existing services provided by twitter, I am more of having the opinion that folks either want to blog or tweet, but the vast majority of bloggers are not tweeters – beyond using twitter as a service to promote their latest blogs.
We have even go so far as to try to create a “wall” of type such as facebook, where folks post short messages and others can response. But even these get very little usage.
All the while our blogging usage just continues to increase and increase and increase.
I have to fully agree with you that blogging has not died. Twitter has not ran it over. I think bloggers are still blogging – and the few that do tweet do so only to advertise their blogging activity.
Great blog you have written Erick.
John B. Abela
how about you do it without the self serving plug.. and the cool things about blogs is you can learn all about evolution… which will be the earth is not the center of the universe of our time for the church… this comment will last about 2 minutes..
dude, you are such a prick.
“Today, blogs are doing fine, while Twitter is struggling with flattening growth, at least to its Website Twitter.com (clients like Seesmic and TweetDeck have seen no slowdown).”
How can you not incorporate clients into this? They are apart of the twitterverse as it were. Growth for twitter apps = growth for twitter.
Gauging growth on unique visitors is a bad way to determine how much twitter is expanding. I rarely go to twitter.com, maybe once a week. But all of my tweets come from Twitterific (desktop), or Twitellator (iphone), and I tweet a good 10-20 times a day as well, so I’m not a casual user.
I understand this is anecdotal, but I see it as a trend. Twitter users are increasingly moving away from the website and to apps.
A better way to gauge it would be average tweets per day. Using unique visitors just doesn’t work in this situation.
I don’t understand how people don’t see decling traffic to the Twitter website as a problem — it clearly is, even if twitter client usage increases.
The only way Twitter will be able to make money is via its website. If Twitter decides that the way they’ll make money is by pushing ad tweets to users who are using clients to access Twitter, the entire service will collapse, and if no one is visiting the site itself, it won’t be able to make money any other way.
VC’s should be worried.
http://twitter.com/aboange
WordPress is obviously more informative and less of a time waste than twitter!
Sarah
http://www.isopurewater.com/
WordPress has exactly the right concept. Let users create plugins (innovation), then pick the best ones and integrate into the core.
And the cycle repeats. That is why it will continue growing stronger.
admin
http://invetrics.com