Twitter Sets New Usage Records

Twitter continues to make the headlines all over the world in the mainstream media, much more so than Facebook despite being several times smaller. But for the past few months, it looked like the media attention wasn't correlating to actual usage, and user growth has been stalling since summer, according to most analytics firms. Many have wondered why Twitter is failing to pick up on the huge growth it saw in spring and contemplated what it meant for the site. Twitter isn't taking any more and revealed that Monday was the site's biggest day and that the trend was continuing.

"Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest-usage day ever (and today will be bigger)," tweeted the company's cofounder and CEO Evan Williams who isn't fazed by the slow down. He doesn't come out with more details so we're left to wonder what those metrics really are, they're certainly not visitor numbers. Most likely, the CEO is talking about tweet volume and important stat to be sure.

What it would mean is that Twitter users, constant in their numbers as they may be, are becoming more and more engaged with the site, a very healthy trend for information network nee microblogging platform. This indicates that users are not only tweeting and sharing more, but likely retweeting and engaging in conversations at a higher lever than before too.

Also interesting is that Monday wasn't a particularly special day news-wise meaning that it wasn't a big story or event that drove up the number of tweets, it was all natural, organic growth. Twitter has seen usage explode on big events, for example Michael Jackson's death last year, but this isn't the case now. What's more, Williams is saying that Tuesday would be an even bigger day indicating that it wasn't a fluke.

Twitter rose by huge numbers for a few months at the start of 2009 spurred by a new-found media attention and several high-profile celebrities using it. Around July though, numbers began to level off and have remained flat since. There have been several proposed explanations, increasing use of mobile or desktop apps and Twitter's poor retention rate. Still, it looks like all is not lost for the site.