Twitter traffic trends

27/05/2011 13:37:26

Twitter is yet again breaking its own traffic records, responsible for 1 in every 184 UK Internet visits on Saturday, according to Experian Hitwise. But the spike in traffic in the wake of Ryan Giggs ‘finally’ being revealed as the super-injunction footballer was hardly a surprise. Several events in recent months have underlined the site’s transition from personal status updater to major journalistic resource, from the Middle Eastern unrest to our own royal wedding.

Hitwise blogged yesterday about the changing Twitter demographic. Users are not only increasing in number but also becoming more closely aligned to the UK online population as a whole in terms of background and beliefs:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2011/05/twitter_accounts_for_1_in_ever.html

Bob Dowson, director at Site Confidence, an NCC Group company, commented: “The challenge that Twitter has to address is not so much increasing user numbers, but rather the extreme unpredictability of traffic when it is so heavily influenced by current events – and this applies to other websites too.

“Poor online reliability and performance rapidly erode brands. Companies should consider the rise in Twitter users not only as a warning about volatile traffic, but also as a method in itself by which information about website outages can be swiftly shared.

“The super-injunctions fiasco was driven by people going online to find information they couldn’t read in print – but clearly traffic spikes can be driven by all sorts of time-specific events. These recent events have highlighted just how erratic online traffic is and can be; and how all websites need to thoroughly understand their own capabilities and prepare for fluctuations. Site capacity, continual monitoring and performance testing should be positioned as a top priority.”

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