Twitter Use Flatlines

Twitter is almost synonymous with explosive growth. But there are signs that 2009's darling of the Internet has already begun to level off, a reversal that would have seemed impossible not long ago. In February 2009, Nielsen Online reported that Twitter's 7 million unique visitors constituted more than 1,000 percent growth in just a year's time. Ashton Kutcher, after beating CNN to the million-follower mark in a neck-and-neck race, began blasting past later milestones with ease. (He's now at 4.1 million followers.) And when Oprah Winfrey embraced the service in April ("HI TWITTERS"), Twitter's popularity simply hockey-sticked.
 
There were skeptics all along--Nielsen also reported last spring that 60 percent of Twitter users failed to return after one month--but excitement about the new medium's potential made them easy to dismiss. Now the data have become difficult to ignore. Twitter's U.S. traffic actually declined from September to October, according to a range of measures. We're by no means Twitter haters here at NEWSWEEK--here's proof--but it seems clear that the service is in for a period of modest performance, as sign-ups of new users are measured against better estimates of existing users who neglect their accounts. One of the things that has made Twitter so successful is its wide-open API; ironically, that same transparency can provide a reality check on the number of people who have let their accounts go totally dormant--who began tweeting during the Oprah bubble, but turned out to be making just a short stop at the birdbath.