75 Million Visitors to Twitter in January

Yup, this measurement from comScore of 75 million people visiting Twitter in January of this year does not take into account those accessing the service through third party apps. Isn’t it nice to get that out of the way right from the start?

Fresh off the news that in January Twitter served over 1.2 billion tweets there is little surprise in a growth chart that looks like this courtesy of TechCrunch and comScore

When you cut to the chase on this though, the question about Twitter has to be less about quantity and more about quality. As more and more of the mainstream begin to discover and possibly embrace Twitter (have you had any “I don’t get that Twitter thing at all” comments from people who are not like you?) the pure volume of visitors, users and tweets will continue to rise. What might not rise is the legitimate information that is in the cacophony of tweets. If it becomes harder and harder to mine and make sense of Twitter’s stream then it won’t matter how many people visit.

Twitter has done it’s part though by moving forward and making the overall experience more useful

Large sites like Twitter and Facebook before it tend to grow in step-like patterns, with bursts of growth followed by periods of flatness during which the site absorbs its new users and adapts to their needs. Twitter has certainly been improving the functionality of its own site, with the rollout of new features such as local trends, a better suggested user list, Twitter Lists, and the Retweet button. Maybe all that work is starting to pay off.

So how do you feel about Twitter today? I ask about today because the tide turns so rapidly in this space that even attempting to predict the future of anything is an exercise in futility. Obviously, no one has a crystal ball (except of course that broker who keeps calling you with “hot tips”) but to call how the social media landscape will play out over any extended period of time is a crap shoot at best.

Your take?

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Google’s Nexus One Slow Out of the Gate

With all of the press in the gadget and Internet marketing world last week around the introduction of the Google Nexus One smart phone you would think that there would be a rush to buy them. Appears that is not the case, at least not initially. My theory is that while there was all kind of chatter amongst the industry, they would be the most likely to buy one but they are not going to commit to a new phone and platform if they are already an iPhone user. Oh, and the VAST majority of people simply don’t run out and buy everything that is launched.

So what’s the lesson here? It’s that the iPhone has the regular consumer’s mind and the Google phone has reached just the industry folks. While we are quick to grant ourselves some special status in the world the sheer numbers are not there to make a real splash out of the gate, especially with the iPhone having a nice lead in the market. Ask the average consumer about this phone and they’ll respind with “Google has a phone?”

So how bad was it? ReadWriteWeb tells us

Just one week after Google launched the Nexus One, its entry into the smartphone field, the numbers are in and it doesn’t look to be keeping up with the competition. We reviewed the iPhone-competitor the other day and see it as a formidable challenger, but sales numbers from its first week fall drastically short of those same numbers for other smartphones during their first week, according to statistics from mobile analytics firm Flurry.

Flurry details the methods used to arrive at these numbers in its blog post and is certain to call the data an estimate. But if they are even close to correct, the Droid, myTouch 3G and iPhone 3GS outsold the Nexus One by a factor, respectively, of 12, three and 80

Yup, that’s right. The iPhone outsold the Nexus One at an 80-1 clip. No matter what the reasons are for this poor showing like $500 for the device with no service contract, little marketing (although you wouldn’t know that if you spend enough time in this industry) or additional early termination fees this is good old fashioned “butt kickin’”.

Did you buy one? If you didn’t why not?

Retweets Will Never Be the Same …. Unless You Want Them To Be

Yesterday, Twitter started to officially roll out its own retweet function that has been the cause of some serious consternation from the Twittersphere (or whatever silly term you want to apply to the Twitter community).

Before we go into any detail please note the following and make sure you filter your reactions through the most important piece of data that you will need to know about this whole thing: you don’t have to use the new function. You can do whatever you want with regard to keeping your version of the status quo or adopting Twitter’s new retweet function. Also, this is not the final product as Evan Williams points out in his explanation of this overly controversial move by Twitter.

Overly controversial? Yup. While this can be viewed as a fundamental shift in how Twitter is used it’s not like some heavy-handed edict has been passed down to the users of Twitter in a “it is what it is” manner. No, it’s just another option. If you feel the need to complain even knowing this piece of information then you are likely to be the lottery winner that would say “Gee, if only I had won it last week I would have had more”. In other words, you probably complain about everything.

Back to the story. TechCrunch sums up the changes as follows

If you do happen to have it now, here’s a few interesting notes about the new feature (at least on twitter.com):

First, there is a new Retweets area in the right side bar. This allows you to see “Retweets by others”, “Retweets by you”, and “Your tweets, retweeted”. While the UI for the main homepage retweets can be a bit confusing at times, this Retweet area is laid out pretty nicely, as it is easy to see who exactly retweeted what.

Second, as co-founder Evan Williams noted today, there is an easy way to turn off retweets from individual users. Simply click on their profile and make sure the Retweet logo (the circular arrows) below their name is not highlighted green. This means that it’s off and you will not see Retweets from that user in your timeline. That’s great for users who go overboard with the feature and muck up your stream.

Third, if you do hate the new Retweet way, just don’t use it. Nothing is stopping you from still using the “RT …” syntax. The new Retweets simply give you an easy way to highlight something to your followers with the click of a button.

I HIGHLY recommend you visit the Ev Williams blog post for his complete explanation of the who, what, where and why of this change. Otherwise, this truly is what it is. Twitter has simply recognized that their third party developer and user system has created something of value. They are now trying to corral it in the best way they know how and leaving it open for debate and use. It’s actually that simple.

Newspaper Ad Revenue Drops a Shocking $2.6B in Q1

Yup, that’s a B as in billion. Just when you think the newspaper industry can’t take another hit it gets hit with a haymaker. According to TechCrunch, the Newspaper Association of America reported a 28.28% year over year in Q1. That number’s monetary equivalent is $2.6B and that’s a stunning number even to an already beleaguered industry.

TechCrunch says

The sharp decline is caused by the lousy state of both digital and dead tree ad sales: the stats posted on the Newspaper Association of America website show that print sales fell by 29.7% in the first three months of this year (to $5.9 billion), while online sales dropped a record 13.4% (to $696.3 million).

Now it almost feels like dog piling on newspapers. With papers closing and the threats of closings being thrown around the kind of graph you see below almost seems unfair. It’s almost like you want the industry to cry “Uncle!” and just throw in the towel.

While most would say that newspapers aren’t going to vanish those same folks would say that the newspaper’s reach and influence will be determined by how well they move their offerings online and if they can get subscribers to pay for their content. The theory is that you pay for paper delivery then you should pay for online. Makes sense but most end users don’t see it that way at all unless there is a specific niche that will support the information that makes their jobs easier with most being related to business.

So is this the bottom yet for the industry? Not likely.

Annual ad sales for American newspapers came in at a grand total of nearly $49.5 billion in 2005 and dropped to about $37.8 billion in 2008. If the decline rate keeps accelerating the way these first quarter results suggest, we could be looking at somewhere in between $26 billion and $30 billion in total ad sales revenue for this year.

The momentum that the deconstruction of the newspaper industry has gained makes it unlikely that newspapers will ever see their heyday numbers again. The new era of ‘newspapers’ is going to need to get underway now if there is to be any papers of note in the future.

So let’s fast forward 10 years from now. It’s 2019. What does the newspaper industry look like. Is it relegated to museum displays or is there still a remnant remaining. Is it possible to see a bounce back by the industry? If so what could that look like? Feel free to jump in the time machine and take a look. Tell everyone what you see – if anything.

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