Twitter visits rocket in Australia in 2009
Social networking tool Twitter has experienced explosive growth in Australia since Christmas, according to new figures published by web monitoring firm Hitwise today.
The site hit an all time high for Australian visits on Saturday, Hitwise said.
Twitter works in a similar way to the status updates on Facebook. Users send out messages with a maximum length of 140 characters to people who have opted to follow them. Twitter users view a feed of all the messages that the people they follow have put out, with the newest ones appearing at the top.
Marketers and media owners are racing to make the most of the platform, while Australian journalists are also using it as a tool to find and break stories.
what do these really mean though, without an understanding of numbers of users it’s of limited use. What base were we starting with?
Hi Ben,
The base line down the left hand side of the graph shows the Twitter traffic as a percentage of overall internet traffic as used/ measured by Hitwise.
Cheers,
Tim
I know that, but no one uses % of total Internet traffic as a metric. You need a ub figure
Hi Ben,
Not my figures. This is one of the metrics that Hitwise uses, and has chosen to share on this occasion. I suspect the reason they do it in this way relates to their audience measurement methodology.
There’s a good discussion at the Talking Digital blog on the value or otherwise of UBs as a measure. http://talkingdigital.wordpres.....e-netbook/
Cheers,
Tim
I find it strange that Twitter is still growing in popularity here, when we don’t get the text message service they get in the states and the UK.
Unless you’ve got an iPhone, generally the answer to ‘what are you doing?’ is quite boring when everyone’s by a computer, isn’t it?
So Twitter effectively becomes a link sharing service, which is what delicious is/was?!
hey tim – the comments above were from me. I agree UB can be flawed at times, but the Hitwise data for me just seems so ambiguous. % of total internet traffic … another weird digital metric that the outside media world seems confused by 😉
Cheers, Ben
Hi Ben, So in other words, I referred you back to your own opinion! At least you’ll agree then…
hehe hopefully!
Remember, Hitwise data excludes all Telstra traffic. Also would be great to get clarification whether mobile data (routed through special servers) is included. Sandra?