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Perhaps this explains why Twitter service has been so intermittent over the last few months. I was scratching around for some data on Twitter user numbers the other day and realised that there’s somewhat of a paucity of information. But I did find some interesting stuff which I thought I’d stick up here.
Estimates of the total number of Twitter users differ slightly but the broad consensus seems to be around the 2.1 million figure that is logged by Twitdir. Twitter growth has accelerated significantly over the past few months, as the graph above sourced from Hitwise shows, seemingly leaving all it’s main competitors trailing in it’s wake. And despite a degree of buzz around Plurk a couple of months back, as Mashable reports, Twitter still seems very much to be the micro-blogging service of choice. Interesting too that the patchy service has apparently failed to put people off, with Hitwise reporting return visitor numbers remaining steady. Personally, in a strange way it has for me become part of it’s charm (though I could perhaps do with a few less fail-whales).
Twitdir also records a "Top 100 Followed" ranking, with the top people like Kevin Rose and Barack Obama, recording follower numbers in the region of 40-50,000.
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