Twitter.com traffic down? Seesmic Web is +30%/month
There are many reports that the traffic from Twitter.com would be going down. We see the opposite on the app side, at least for Seesmic. Seesmic Web is growing very strong as you can see the number of Tweets posted growing.
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter’s audience expansion had already been documented earlier in 2009, including a surge in global visitors, while a same-day analysis cited Nielsen data showing a 27.8% fall in U.S. visits to Twitter.com from September to fall 2009. Seesmic’s reported 30% monthly Web growth and rising tweet volume sharpen the distinction between traffic to Twitter’s site and activity on the service.
Seesmic had also broadened its client footprint, with a Windows desktop client launched four days earlier and Facebook Pages support added in September. Its figures make the client layer a more consequential lens for measuring where Twitter use occurs.
First-order effects
- Seesmic gains evidence that its Web client is attracting more posting activity even as Twitter.com’s U.S. web audience declines by the cited Nielsen measure.
- Twitter.com traffic becomes a less complete proxy for Twitter usage, because Seesmic reports growing tweet volume through an alternative interface.
Second-order effects
- Other Twitter-client makers have an incentive to emphasize engagement and posting metrics rather than rely on Twitter.com visitor counts when presenting their growth.
- Seesmic’s desktop and Web offerings can reinforce one another by giving users multiple access points to the same Twitter activity.
Third-order effects
- If client growth persists while destination-site traffic softens, control over the user interface—not the underlying social service’s homepage—becomes a key competitive layer in social-media distribution.
- Measurement of social-network growth shifts toward activity across third-party clients, complicating traffic-based assessments centered on a single domain.
The trend: Twitter usage is becoming increasingly distributed across third-party clients, separating service activity from visits to Twitter.com.