by Search Copywriter
K. Todd
K. Todd
Now over three years old, Twitter is finally receiving recognition as a powerful social networking tool. The last year has been a rough one for the site, from killing SMS updates for UK members last August to fears that the site may close down completely - but it struggled its way back and now appears to be enjoying the fruits of its labours.Twitter has officially caught up with Digg in the popularity scales - and shot right past it. According to analyst site Hitwise, Twitter's traffic has increased 10-fold in the last year and, for the first time since its launch, has surpassed fellow social media site Digg. Just.
Not all attention is good attention, however: Twitter's growing popularity has seen it become the target of hackers, who recently attacked the accounts of celebrities such as Barack Obama and Britney Spears, whose accounts had to be suspended until the issue was resolved. Not only has the comical happened, but also the critical - when it comes to security matters, that is. Twitter hasn't had much luck of late defending itself from several phishing attacks - but this still hasn't seemed to put users off.
In fact, Twitter's user base appears stronger than ever. British comedian Stephen Fry recently convinced fellow comic Jonathan Ross to join the site and both now enjoy huge follower bases, having become just as dedicated to the site as the Tweeters (Twitter slang for user) following them.
Twitter currently sits at 23rd in the charts with 0.24% social networking site market share - but don't let the low figure put you off. Compared with fourth position MySpace's 5.01% and the dramatically lower percentages following it, the once small-time independent site is doing incredibly well. It's no wonder that current social giant Facebook thought about getting its foot in.
So what's next for Twitter? With 6 million users in a database that is ever growing, it looks like it's only onwards and upwards for the microblogging site. Will Digg be the only victim of its popularity? We'll just have to wait and see.
