Has Twitter Growth Suddenly Flattened?

There's something unusual going on with Twitter traffic, it appears. Unique Visitors to twitter.com increased to 19.4 Million in April, surpassing the New York Times for the first time.

Oprah’s first tweet on April 17, 2009 delivered the highest Daily Reach ever to the site, with nearly two percent of all Americans online visiting Twitter.

But there also is data suggesting Twitter traffic has flattened, growing just 1.47 percent (up to 19,728,619 monthly visitors) in May 2009, according to Compete.com.

One possible explanation is that the pool of people with an immediate resonance with Twitter already have joined. Monthly visits to Twitter have increased by 6.99 percent, up to 134,536,240. That might be explained by heavier use among current users, since new user growth apparently has flattened.

10% of Tweeters Produce 90% of Tweets

The top 10 percent of prolific Twitter users account for over 90 percent of tweets, say researchers at Harvard Business School. So what does that mean? Maybe less than you would think.

Some will argue it shows Twitter actually isn't actually as popular as it seems. And at least one other study shows a very-high churn rate of new Tweeters.

"Currently, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent," says David Martin, Nielsen Wireless VP.

Unless that churn rate changes, Twitter ultimately will reach only about 10 percent of Internet users, Nielsen Wireless predicts. A company, service or application cannot churn 60 percent a month and expect any different conclusion.

Twitter's big problem seems to be that so many people do not find it useful. The fact that 90 percent of Tweets come from 10 percent of users is in fact not surprising or unusual.

Others will suggest that the highly-skewed tweeting pattern means Twitter activity is more like a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network. But something similar to this is true of blog posting as well. A small percentage of people supply most of the posts.

A typical social networking site might have the top 10 percent of users account for 30 percent of all activity as well.

At Wikipedia, the top 15 percent of the most prolific editors account for 90

percent of Wikipedia's edits.

The point is that it is user churn, not the disparate distribution of tweets, that are of significance.

The Pareto principle, colloquially referred to as the "80-20 rule" or the "long tail,"

occurs widely in both human and natural domains.

Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days. That would not be unusual if tweets follow the Pareto rule, and they seem to.

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Is Twitter Really a Late Boomer Technology?

Only 22 percent of Generation Y consumers between the ages of 18 ad 24 are using Twitter, according to a new survey by  the Participatory Marketing Network.

Separate data from Nielsen Online shows that the single biggest Twitter cohort is users between 35 and 49.

$99 iPhone Available Now, 2-Year Contract Required

The 8GB 3G iPhone now can be bought for $99. A two-year contract is required to get that price, and monthly costs for a package with 450 out of network voice minutes, 5,000 night and weekend minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls to other AT&T customers, with 200 text messages,will cost $88 a month after the taxes are added to the R75 monthly cost of service.

Sprint Offers Corporate Liable Customers $39.99 Mobile Broadband

Sprint is Selling a $39.99 mobile broadband service for "corporate liable" accounts, providing 500 MBytes of data monthly, a bucket Sprint says is two times what Verizon offers and 10 times what AT&T offers at the same price point.

In addition, customers pay only five cents per for each additional megabyte of usage, which is less than half what the competition’s $39.99 plan charges for overage. Verizon's $39.99 plan has a 250 MB cap and charges 10 cents per MByte for overage.

AT&T's $40 plan has a 50 MByte cap and $1.00 per MByte for overages. 

The AT&T "moderate user" plan is probably enough for users who basically only check email and do some light Web surfing. 

The Verizon plan probably is enough for traveling workers who use the Web pretty heavily on the road and check email. 

The Sprint plan probably is sufficient for traveling workers who watch streaming video to a certain extent. 

The assumptions are monthly email consumption of about a couple Mbytes a month and per-day Web consumption of a couple of megabytes a day a day when out of the office. 

The issue is video streaming, which will be the driver of overages for most users. Most enterprise workers who are not watching tons of video probably only require a couple of gigabytes of usage each month. 

If one assumes a worker at a desk most of the day, and really using the Web heavily, could consume 50 Mbytes to 100 Mbytes each day, you have some idea of how to estimate usage. Most workers probably do not consume even that much. 

On the road, most people are doing other things, so it wouldn't be unusal to see daily consumption drop far behow behavior seen at a desk.

Perhaps 5 Mbytes a day would be typical. Of course, every user is different, but most enterprise workers who travel a couple days a month, and are in meetings or doing technical support will not even use 5 Mbytes a day when on the road. 

Streaming video, though, will upset all those assumptions. 

Online Advertising Dips 5% for First Time

Some people seem to be shocked that online advertising, which has been growing for seven straight years, dipped about five percent in the first quarter. It wouldn't be the first time people have argued, or seemed to believe, that something related to the Internet can transcend the operation of markets.

At the turn of the century, new "Internet" business models were touted that seemingly defied the normal business rule that one must have revenue to be sustainable. Others argued that valuations of Internet companies were different from valuations of companies based in the physical world. 

Anybody who argued to the contrary was ignored with a direct or indirect "you don't get it" attitude. That belief was proved devastatingly wrong.

Online advertising is advertising. Advertising is a cost of doing business. Companies are being careful about the costs of doing business. So it is no surprise there is a bit of a dip. The Internet is part of human life. It is not immune from things that happen in the broader spheres of life. 

Nor is the delusion especially new. After 1917, the Soviet Union believed it could wall itself off from the global economy. After World War II it maintained the fiction of two global economies, one capitalist, one socialist. The Soviet Union was wrong. 

The Internet changes lots of things. It doesn't repeal or escape economic laws or human behavior.

IP PBX Line Shipments Will Dip for First Time Ever in 2009

IP PBX lines shipped in 2009 will decline for the first time ever in 2009, say analysts at Dell'Oro Group. Aside from the global recession, vendor instability (Nortel, in all likelihood) is causing a bit of hesitation.

“For 2009, we anticipate a degree of vendor volatility that will cause many customers to stay on the sidelines for a longer period of time than we would expect if downward pressure was coming only from the weakened economy,” says Alan Weckel, Dell’Oro Group director.

“In the current environment, some customers will hold on to existing analog and digital lines for a longer period of time,” Weckel says.

According to the report, Cisco, Avaya and Nortel had the most IP line shipments in the quarter. The eight largest vendors in the market, including Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel and Siemens represent about 49 percent of total line shipments in the first quarter of 2009.

Notwithstanding, IP telephony penetration will continue to grow this year, albeit at a slower pace compared to the previous years.