The latest social networking success, Twitter is officially the fastest growing website in the UK according to Hitwise.
The internet analyst company have released their 2009 growth statistics which show the rapid growth of the micro blogging site. Currently the fifth most popular social network, Twitter has benefitted from celebrity exposure, with the likes of Stephen Fry, Lily Allen and Jimmy Carr posting, or ‘tweeting’, regularly allowing fans to keep in touch.
Twitter was ranked 84th most popular site in 2008 and has seen a huge growth in traffic in the last year, jumping 79 places up the chart – Twitter is fast becoming as cool as the iPod, Blackberry, Xbox and indeed Facebook.
The US based website is also becoming a valuable marketing tool, with many large organisations and multinational companies joining the Twitter phenomenon. UK companies have been slower out of the blocks than their US counterparts have in utilising this new medium: Dell, for example, use Twitter to communicate directly with customers – that certainly beats getting jammed in a call centre queue.
Live tweets and hashtags are features unique to Twitter, and with its relatively new Twitter Search function allowing real-time search capabilities, paid advertising is surely imminent.
Part of Twitter’s success story in the UK over the past 12 months has been down to its user-friendliness, addictiveness and the fact that it is not in direct competition with Social Network giants Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. It is a certainty that a unique application such as Twitter will continue to grow, but whether a suitable business model can be found to match it remains to be seen.
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