As the months fly by, Twitter continues to increase its traffic and popularity. Words like “retweet” and “followers” have become second nature to almost all web designers. But how popular has Twitter become? Can it really replace social bookmarking?
At Resource Mania, we think this is definitely a possibility. Our conclusion is based on various observations and inferences. In this article, we will present a few reasons to why Twitter can really replace Digg, Delicious, and more.
1. Spreadability
When a link is tweeted, all followers are notified almost instantly. Let’s take a look at what could happen this occurs:
- A link and description for an article is placed on Twitter by Person A
- Person A has a total of 30 followers. One of these followers, Person B, likes the article and decides to retweet.
- Person B’s retweet now displays the article and description for his 30 followers. In two simple retweets, 60 people now know about the article. By continuing this chain, more and more followers will see the article and click the link that leads to it. Person A will obtain a decent to large amount of traffic.
Now, how about this from a social bookmarking standpoint? Let’s look at Digg:
- Person A places his link and description on Digg
- Person B stumbles upon Person A’s link and Diggs it.
- Even with two Diggs, Person A’s link obtains very little to no attention. All the popular links dominate Digg. Person A has to have many more people read his/her article and Digg it to get large amounts of traffic.
Notice how a link can easily get popular on Digg if a website already has a lot of viewers. Each one may read the article and Digg it. Unfortunately, not all websites have large traffic. This is where Twitter comes into play.
Twitter can provide even the smallest website with a large pack of visitors. A high traffic website may obtain more due to a greater amount of followers, but the sheer spreadability of Twitter makes this advantage mostly obsolete.
2. Data
By just analyzing hypothetical situations, we do not guarantee results. Thus, there must be data to back our ideas.
2.1 Tech Crunch
Tech Crunch is an extremely popular technology website that has over 3 million (yes, that’s right.. million) subscribers. Recently, an article appeared on Tech Crunch revealing their traffic statistics:
Top Sources of Traffic To TechCrunch
- Google: 32.7%
- Direct: 22.7%
- Twitter: 9.7%
- Digg: 7.4%
- Techmeme: 2.4%
- Other: 25.1%
As you can see, Twitter dominates the polls with over 9% of traffic. It clearly overthrows Digg and is only outnumbered by direct traffic and Google itself.
Now, if one source of traffic for a very popular website can defeat Digg, could it be considered a new revolution in social bookmarking? We think so.
2.2 Twitter incredible growth
According to this article by Mashable, Twitter underwent a 1382% growth from February to March of this year. Not only that, but Twitter receives over 14 million visitors per month.
With statistics like these, who can ignore the true traffic potential of this site? It has a large amount of visitors and can be easily used to spread links. The only other desirable property would be a loyal user group. Well, guess what? The average visitor time on Twitter is over 8 minutes. That’s right. 8 minutes. Only a handful of sites can match this value.
3. Indirect Traffic
On top of everything that was previously stated, one must note the indirect traffic that results from a popular link on Twitter.
Of course, many Twitterers will follow a popular link and visit a site, but there are alternative methods for people to acknowledge it.
3.1 Tweetmeme
Tweetmeme is a widely used site that tracks the most popular links on Twitter. Each of these links - once discovered - is placed directly on the Tweetmeme homepage for thousands of people to see. If a link becomes extra popular, it is stored in the Tweetmeme sidebar for the whole day.
With absolutely no effort from the webmaster who first tweeted his/her link, Tweetmeme may index it in their own database and attract many more visitors to a website. This simple, but effective indirect traffic source is a key element in unlocking the true prowess of Twitter.
4. Concluding Statements
From the data and analysis above, Twitter can be seen as a whole new way to attract traffic. The ability of Twitter is so large that it should not be ignored.
With this, I strongly urge you to think twice when you hear, “Which one is a better social bookmarker? Twitter or Digg?”
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