Aira Bongco

There has been a significant change in the way people are reading tweets. This, of course, may affect the way Twitter users react to advertisements.

An idea struck me when I saw this article from Oliver Marks entitled “Twitter Four Years On: Investing Time Wisely.” If we think about it, it has been four years since the creation of Twitter. While one can attest that 2009 is the peak of its success, changes have occurred on the users over time. Take for example the utilization of Twitter for business which brought about the increased occurrence of advertisements. These only occurred with time.

Of course, it is not only the posters that changed. The tweet reading habits of Twitter users have also changed as well. I could still remember the times when I can carry on a full conversation on Twitter. While we know that we can utilize other means like online messengers, Twitter seemed to be a viable way during those times. But today, I somehow think that it is not that possible. While it may be useful for comments and sharing information, it is not as good for holding conversations. In fact, I think that email may fare better when it comes to this purpose. With this, the way I read tweets has also changed. Unlike before where I am excited to see the friendly tweets, now I am drained to see the constant sharing of links. Not that it is bad. I think this phenomenon has triggered my filter switch to only click through information that I am interested in.

To cut the long story short, I have this guess that people are not reading tweets as well as they used to. Ask yourself. Are you reading each and every tweet? I doubt that anyone can do that unless of course if you do not have a life and you can get online Twitter all day (which may also mean you are not human). What I mean is people’s habit of reading tweets have changed and this may affect the success of tweeting advertisements.

But of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. There are people who have built enough credibility online that they can send out messages and be noticed. The tweets of these people seem to trigger a this-is-important light bulb on their followers which makes their tweets not only read but retweeted to even more people.

With this, there is a question if Twitter remains to be a good advertisement tool. People are not giving that much attention to tweets like they used to. So if you are thinking on promoting your product online, maybe it is better to simply use other means of advertising. Or maybe you should just make your tweets more catchy.

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I read a recent report from Bill Tancer who is the General Manager of Hitwise that the actual figures does not necessarily translate to the claimed success of Twitter based on market share.

Hitwise Manager showed some statistics that there is a significant decline in Twitter’s market share. The steady increases in visits and “Twitter” searches have significantly stopped to rise as of April, 2009 and it is now moving merely in an up and down fashion as shown in the graphs.

This means that Twitter is not gaining traffic as quickly as it did before and this is what Bill called “user saturation”. He attributed it to new user traffic. Since there is a decrease of new users from Twitter’s rise to popularity, the traffic rates are not growing as well.

If one will take the time to understand this, this means that Twitter is losing returning users. The market share is only the difference between new users and returning users. With this, can you imagine what will happen if the level of new users dropped significantly?

There is also the need for Twitter to address why there is a lack of returning users. I have interviewed some of my peers and some of them think that Twitter offers no use to them. They have tried it out but they do not see the importance of seeing small updates of other people. There is therefore a need to reiterate Twitter’s purpose.

I think this is a call for Twitter to increase the conversion of new users to loyal users. It seems like the majority of Twitter’s market share is only from new users. This may be treated as crucial information because of recent news on issues on Twitter funding.

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