The Twitter Population...

I have noticed alot of people use Twitter now as one of their social networks. It is hard for me to go visit any website and NOT see that banner "Follow us on Twitter!". It doesn't bother me, it's just funny how popular Twitter had gotten, even small to big businesses use Twitter like AT&T, I think Target and Wal-Mart use Twitter. Hell, even other social networking sites use Twitter like Myspace and IMVU use Twitter to send updates about their service and such. I own about five Twitter accounts, each one I use for a different thing. One account I use for my personal tweets, like about my blog or what I am doing.

Another account I post both what I am doing on and off of IMVU.com. My third account is for my soon to come online store, I just made it in case some nut job steals my store name...you never know *shifty eyes* lmao. Fourth account is for a group on IMVU called Furry Pride, I pretty much announce updates for contests and such going on within the group. Last account is for my deviantART.com account, I post what projects I am currently working on, when I will have things done, and if I submitted anything onto DA.

I did some research (oh lord, Kevin did homework) and found out that as we know, over 14 million people are attracted to micro-blogging services JUST in the United States alone. But how many people actually sign up for Twitter.com, after hearing about it either on the radio or seeing it on T.V.? eMarketer decides to take a whack at this question this year and estimates that there are currently about 6 million registered Twitter users, which actually sums to about 3.8 percent of the people who are on the internet.

The research firm further estimates that those numbers will double by the end of 2009 to 12.1 million users, and continue to increase another 50 percent in 2010 to bring the service to a total audience of roughly 18 million registered users. But still, if you think about it, Twitter is still fairly small compared to the long time services like Facebook, who now has roughly 200 million active users, or even Myspace, who still has user counts in the high 8 if not 9 digits.

However, the Twitter audience – people who don’t actually tweet, hence accounting for the difference between traffic and users – will likely continue to grow, much in the way that even blogs, as I have found out, have grown over the past decade. People will visit the Twitter profiles of friends, family, or their favorite celebrities, and access that information in different ways, whether it’s through clients or portals that attempt to aggregate it.

Speaking of clients and portals for Twitter, there are multiple ways to being active on twitter without actually being on the website. You can tweet via from phone, desktop, ot even just anywhere else on the net if you have a browser app installed like TwitterFox (app for firefox). I first started using TweetDeck, a free downloadable application that allows you to stay updated and also to tweet from your desktop, which, on the other hand, is now available for the iPhone as well . Then I migrated to Twhirl, another desktop program that allows you to stay updated and to tweet, BUT also allows you to be signed into more than one Twitter account at the same time!

Finally I am now currently using HootSuit, a website you can log into that allows you to be signed into more than one twitter account and also to tweet the same message to more than one account at the same time if you choose to. The downfall to HootSuit, in my opinion, is that I have to go to their website to do it, I cant use their service from my desktop, which is inconvenient on my behalf.

All in all, Twitter has become a popular service all over the internet (and even advertised off the net) and will continue to increase it's popularity, "But for how long?" as a friend of mine asked me, she is convinced Twitter wont stay popular for long, and she is right, nothing lasts forever :P