Over the past twelve months, the use of Twitter has grown by nearly 1,000%, according to industry analysts HitWise. The Twitter site jumped from 2,953rd most popular site in the UK in 2008 to 291st as of mid-January 2009.
Hitwise research director Heather Dougherty said "A big driver of traffic to Twitter last week was around the US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River last Thursday, driving many posts and updates about the situation." The first picture of the crash was posted to TwitPic, and has sparked a new era of citizen journalism.
The dominance of smartphone mobile technology in 2008, the integration of social media and social networking user behaviour becoming the norm can be attributed to Twitter's growth.
Twitter still has a long way to go. The ‘Social Networking and Forums’ communications category for week ending 17 January 2009 ranks Twitter as 23rd based on site visits – only 0.24% for the category. Facebook sustains its leading position, with nearly 38% of site visits, twice as many as YouTube and four times more than predecessor Bebo.
"Twitter receives the largest amount of its traffic from the USA, but its penetration is greater in the UK market," said Robin Goad, a research director at Hitwise.
"However, the US may overtake the UK the week following the surge in Tweets during Barack Obama's inauguration. The new American President is already the most followed person on Twitter."
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