14 DAY TRIAL // The latest estimates regarding the number of Twitter users predict that there will be around 18 million US adults who will access the microblogging platform during 2009 every month, regardless of the operating system used. This number represents a twofold increase compared to the one in 2008, climbing another 44.4 percent during 2010, when 26 million adults will be using Twitter.
This report was published by eMarketer and takes into consideration 11.1 % of all Internet users as Twitter users for 2009, and this number is in accordance with the one published by other companies, such as Interactive and Pew Internet & American Life Project, which forecast 13 % and 11 % users, respectively, in the spring of 2009. For the upcoming year, eMarketer estimates that the microblogging service will be accessed by 15.5 % of US adult Web users.
In April, the company predicted that there would be around 12.1 million US adult Twitter users during 2009. The considerable increase over this earlier figure is due to stronger growth seen by Twitter in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the already huge gains from the first quarter of the year.
On the other hand, in June 2009, another research company, namely Nielsen, announced that there had been almost 21 million unique visitors to Twitter.com. This figure represents a dramatic year-over-year increase of nearly 2,000%, as well as an upwards trend over May 2009. Three estimates released to the public revealed that Nielsen, comScore and Compete recorded 18.2 million, 17.6 million and 19.7 million US visitors, respectively, for that specific month.
Furthermore, there are Twitter users who access the microblogging service using text messages, mobile applications or one of the numerous desktop apps available, besides entering the website Twitter.com. Therefore, eMarketer's prediction of 18 million users for the ongoing year is quite conservative, and further research reveals that this is partly caused by the low level of engagement among most of the Twitter users.
“Since our earlier Twitter user estimates were published in April 2009, the number of Twitter.com visitors has risen sharply,” said eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna. “In addition, research data shows healthy - and growing - percentages of US Internet users adopting the popular microblogging platform. These two factors compelled us to upwardly revise our previous forecast.”
In addition, it seems that large numbers of Twitter users stop accessing the service after experimenting with it for a short period of time, whereas others use the service only sporadically. Due to these considerations, Paul Varna believes that estimates need to take a conservative approach to Twitter's user growth trends for the upcoming 18 months.