According to Twitter, Twitter.com is the most popular application within the TwitterSphere with 78% of all Twitter users visiting it in the past month.
My initial take was this is a major surprise given a lot of other surveys, including one by Sysomos (a client) suggest that Twitter.com’s market share among places to read and write tweets is well below 50%.
So, where’s the disconnect between what Twitter says and what the market is doing?
Here’s the explanation: While I don’t doubt the fact many people visit Twitter.com at least once per months, I would argue until shown otherwise that people are not actively engaged with Twitter.com.
In thinking about my own approach to Twitter.com, I swing by my account and those of clients at last once a month to update profiles and account settings, change avatars and check out the Find People service. I rarely posts updates from Twitter or read many tweets because it has nowhere near the functionality of Tweetdeck, HootSuite or Seesmic.
According to Twitter, I count among the 78% of Twitter users who have used Twitter.com in the past 30 days. It is, in fact, true but it’s not like I’m really using Twitter.com as anything more than an administrative tool.
So while Twitter can claim Twitter.com is widely used, it’s really a quasi-truth unless Twitter can provide more details about how much time people are actually spending on Twitter.com.
For more, check out Jared Newman’s story in PC World about on Twitter.com still “stinks”.
One Comment
You are wrong. There are no third-party clients – desktop/browser – out there which are compelling enough for average people to adopt and use on daily basis. The geeks have never been in the majority and this is one reason why it is not surprising to see that mobile use is up and twitter.com's site is leading.
Twitter.com was not always effective but unless you have missed, they are improving. The retweet and retweet of the retweet data is interesting, besides, one could effectively follow using lists because lists is akin to grouping your followers. And on top of that, everything has RSS.