Twitter and Blogging 2.0
Why Twitter became the application du jour
The key to Twitter's wildfire adoption was in opening its API to developers who then built Twitter applications on top of the feeds. Mashable lists 140+ Twitter applications.
Twitter.com isn't actually the primary recipient of its web traffic, Larry Dignan @ ZDNet says 90% of Twitter traffic are its API calls. On the negative side, Twitter now has famous network down times because too many users are accessing Tweeter via those applications.
Why Twitter's popularity is crashing it
Here's why: Twitter's broadcast model, although similar to "closed circuit" radio doesn't broadcast on a simple mass media standard, like radio airwave. Each "tweet" is stored in a huge database, and then must be broadcast across a variety of media - to mobile phones, websites, or one of the many Twitter desktop clients - and specifically to a group of followers. Problems arise, according to Om Malik when a burgeoning number of Twitterers like Scoble have 25,000 subscribers + that overload the database.
Why blogs are impacted by Twitter and Blogging 2.0
Blogging 2.0 can be best described as the social media that are becoming utilized to voice or share the same information that blogs do.
Blogs have become decentralized, impacted by the tipping point mass of users of other syndication avenues - Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook. Bloggers are beginning to reallocate the time they spend on various social media. Check out the noticeably dwindling Alexa web traffic patterns of the 5 top trafficked real estate blogs that Jon Washburn @ Active Rain compiles on a monthly basis... most of the top 20 follow the same pattern.
Last year at this time, I also noted that the universe of readers of real estate blogs was also decreasing - Real Estate Blogosphere reaching Ceiling?
The key to Twitter's wildfire adoption was in opening its API to developers who then built Twitter applications on top of the feeds. Mashable lists 140+ Twitter applications.
Twitter.com isn't actually the primary recipient of its web traffic, Larry Dignan @ ZDNet says 90% of Twitter traffic are its API calls. On the negative side, Twitter now has famous network down times because too many users are accessing Tweeter via those applications.
Why Twitter's popularity is crashing it
Here's why: Twitter's broadcast model, although similar to "closed circuit" radio doesn't broadcast on a simple mass media standard, like radio airwave. Each "tweet" is stored in a huge database, and then must be broadcast across a variety of media - to mobile phones, websites, or one of the many Twitter desktop clients - and specifically to a group of followers. Problems arise, according to Om Malik when a burgeoning number of Twitterers like Scoble have 25,000 subscribers + that overload the database.
Why blogs are impacted by Twitter and Blogging 2.0
Blogging 2.0 can be best described as the social media that are becoming utilized to voice or share the same information that blogs do.
Blogs have become decentralized, impacted by the tipping point mass of users of other syndication avenues - Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook. Bloggers are beginning to reallocate the time they spend on various social media. Check out the noticeably dwindling Alexa web traffic patterns of the 5 top trafficked real estate blogs that Jon Washburn @ Active Rain compiles on a monthly basis... most of the top 20 follow the same pattern.
Last year at this time, I also noted that the universe of readers of real estate blogs was also decreasing - Real Estate Blogosphere reaching Ceiling?
Pat I think you are drawing your conclusion based on the wrong data point. Alexa is in some instances wholly innaccurate.
Compete.com shows blog traffic growing
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/inman.com+curbed.com+thehousingbubbleblog.com/?metric=uv
Your premise may be correct that competing social media outlets will dilute the blog traffic, but I think we need more empirical evidence beyond an alexa screen shot!
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Great point Louis. We know Alexa is flawed due to its tracking methodology based on the consumer use of the Alexa toolbar. I thought the downward trend of the sites seemed significant. However, Compete's stats do contradict Alexa's.
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Pat - as they say in the real estate blogosphere - local, local, local
The traffic on our site continues to grow and I would suspect that is the case with most local blogs that have a strong presence and position in their local markets.
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Pat... I'm always suspect of any conclusions drawn from Alexa data. Alexa does not come close to accurately portraying our traffic, for example. It's not even close. Even compete is supremely flawed, though does come closer.
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Alexa has historically only showed stats for windows users that have the alexa toolbar installed. Given that the tool bar has been available only in english has also historically excluded many international users.
I dont keep up with alexa so these may have changed, but if so, only recently.
Compete takes a wider swath of users into account but still is only accurate about as much as an exit poll is accurate in politics.
Tony
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