Twitter Growth Declining

Today Hubspot released its third State of the Twittersphere report, which shows a significant decline in the growth of Twitter users but also indicates the average Twitter user is more engaged.

 

Highlights of the Report

• Twitter user growth peaked at 13% in March 2009 by October it was down to 3.5%
• Traffic to Twitter.com has declined but may be an indication that more people are using third-party applications such as TweetDeck
• Today the average Twitter account has 300 followers; in July, it had 70
• The average account now follows 173 accounts; in July it was only following 47
• The average account today has posted 420 updates; in July that number was 119
• Peak tweeting time is in the evening between 10 and 11pm
• The highest usage days for Twitter are Thursday and Friday. The lowest usage is on the weekend.

Note that the averages are deceptive as a few very large accounts can skew the results. About 82% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers and are following less than 100 people themselves.

Download the full January 2010 report. Or download the July 2009 and December 2008 reports.