Twitter Traffic Plunges

Twitter’s traffic has dropped by about 25% in 90 days, reversing course on it’s giant exponential ramp up during spring and early summer.

Perhaps once people got intrigued by simple social networking, they moved on to interfaces that allowed more than 2 sentences.

Here is the image that must be keeping the twitter exec’s and $100 million investors really nervous:

Just over the past month traffic has declined an estimated 15%. Twitter did an enormous amount to help bring new people into social networking, but I think their hay day is coming to and end (and I’m sure plenty of people will be cheering as the old fail whale begins years of decline).

MySpace Advertising Performance Improves

MySpace Advertisers already know, performance at the social network giant has increased by leaps and bounds over the past several months, while prices continue to drop.

Is the performance boost because younger kids are abandoning the network in exchange for more niche driven communities? Perhaps the new ad placements and improved interface have finally combined to form the special sauce for conversions. Maybe all the other advertisers just left (haha)!

This past year MySpace ran into a ceiling on traffic, the year over year growth digits aren’t as exciting (in fact traffic is down year over year, 10% just last month) as past years and the site looks doomed from almost every angle. Maybe just the realization they would go out of business forced MySpace to start acting like a business.

While Twitter and many other newer social networks will likely hit a ceiling then deflate, MySpace may just survive long enough to buy the guys who are in the spotlight today. As ad rates continue to drop, MySpace continues to step up and work harder.

At the end of the day, traffic prices and conversions are all that matter and MySpace is running away with the lead for advertisers no matter how you slice it.

Kanye West Is Dead Hoax

Kanye West isn’t dead, yet after 48 hours the rumor will not die. I saw a new rumor last night Kanye’s mom had died, it could even be true, I’m so confused by all this nonsense flying around on Twitter.

I think Balloon Boy got everyone excited to fake the Kanye West funk. Now getting a lie re-tweeted 200 times is almost an art form. I’ve noticed recently, around 30% of the trending topics on Twitter at 3am are hoaxes or half truths (maybe this % is lower than real life, lol).

While it’s funny and interesting to watch, over the long run this type of activity could devalue twitter.

Do you find the hoaxes entertaining? Do you think they improve or decrease your Twitter experience? Is the trending topics list an open door for spammers? Does anyone gain from this type of exposure? Post your feedback in the comment box below.

Twitter Problems and Updates

Twitter is Down, Biz Stone Sleeps.

Twitter downtime problems continue. The service has been down for 5 hours. While founder Biz Stone is passed out after a night of taste testing his latest vintage of Twitter Wine, twitter users are wondering if the Old Fail Whale is going to be beached all day.

How can Twitter screw up so hugely in a 24 hour time span?

Yesterday was a big day on Twitter. The #BeatCancer frenzy went into full swing very early on. I worked through the previous night and got to see it all develop. There was to be an epic attempt to set a world record for most social mentions of a #hashtag, all in support of raising money for cancer research.

What is #BeatCancer?

It’s a an organization that got brands to donate 1 cent everytime someone included #BeatCancer in any messages they posted. Obviously everyone in the twittersphere was excited to get behind this and see it occupy the #1 position all day as we’d celebrate the money we were helping raise.

The celebration would never happen. Some sort of filtering mechanisms kept #BeatCancer from even appearing in the trend list. This led to confusion, that was met with disinformation and rumors that the entire #BeatCancer drive was a hoax.

Have hackers in Chemotherapy DOS’d the Fail Whale? Did Mr Stone give everyone the day off? Does anyone even work at Twitter? The people at TweetDeck seem to do 50x faster/better job at development, maybe Biz should pick up the phone.

Twitter Status Blog Fail

While researching 20 seconds for this article I noticed Twitter now uses Tumblr for their status blog. The funny thing is after 5 hours of being offline, the status blog doesn’t mention any problems. FAIL.

Is Tumblr the Twitter Killer?

Each day an increasing number of people are being exposed to Tumblr through links in tweets, articles about social media, and recommendations from friends. The surprising part is how many people are becoming addicted to the free blogging service.

What is Tumblr some may ask? It’s a very simple blogging interface with no character limits. People can rate, comment on, and reblog other member’s posts. Some posts get reblogged and reblogged until the post is displayed on 100s of blogs. This type of exposure only accelerates the reblogging.

Tumblr is Twitter on steroids
The simple control dashboard makes posting media, quotes, music, videos, pictures, and links a complete breeze for even the most novice users. The follow / unfollow process and associated message stream works the same as Twitter.

Users can fully customize their blogs by selecting from a large number of templates (users also can custom edit these templates; so using Google Analytics, Adsense, and other snippets of code is a snap. You can even use your own domain.

Twitter’s flash in the pan may be burning out
Twitter topped headlines all summer with the volumes of new user accounts being created. The truth is Twitter’s traffic peaked about 100 days ago and continues to look weak. Twitter has low “stickyness” for new users, below 17% ever make it past 20 tweets. Spam is becoming an increasing issue. If you don’t tweet, the service isn’t as rewarding. Many think twitter is useless if you aren’t technical enough to setup groups, use third party software, and seek out solutions to extract the useful data form within the twitterstream.

Tumblr traffic in steeping uptrend
Tumblr has been showing huge gains in traffic over recent weeks. They are attracting users from every age class (twitter has always had a problem recruiting the the 20 and under crowd) which in turn is making the site content relevant to everyone. Tumblr has massive global appeal as the numbers clearly indicate. The graphical scoreboard approach to measuring “tumbularity” is a brilliant way to keep users generating new content.

Tumblr is a toddler
Tumblr is currently flirting with the top 300 level on Alexa. In comparison with the major social networks, this rolling stone isn’t on the radar yet. Nearly half this traffic comes from within 6 states. There is still time left to stake a giant claim.

Would Tumblr be able to scale with a pyroclastic flow of massive growth? Chad King’s research indicates their war chest contains under $5 million. The site is already sluggish during prime time hours. Uptime monitoring shows 95.83% uptime over the past 90 hours (on 15 minute checks). I’m keeping my fingers crossed.