Getting accurate statistics regarding the total number of Twitter users is nearly impossible. The company doesn't release numbers, leaving various twitter "experts" and tracking sites to offer educated guesses.
For example, an interesting blog called
Twitter Facts reported last September that Twitter had surpassed 3 million users, citing data from another site called
Twitdir.com (which is down for the moment). But Twitter Facts noted that another
blog, by German digital researcher Benedikt Koehler, ballparked at the time that there were between 3.5 million and 4.5 million Twitter users.
Earlier this month, Compete.com
estimated that Twitter had nearly 6 million users (unique visitors). I've also read figures as high as 12 million.
Again, it's all guesswork as long as Twitter keeps the data to itself. But I noticed a trend myself recently based on data I see on a site called
Twitter Grader. First, a disclaimer: the main draw of Twitter Grader is, shall we say, slightly frothy. The site enables Twitter users to see how they "rate" compared to other users, on a scale up to 100. Grader takes into account how many people a Twitter user is following, how many followers they have, how many "tweets" they've posted, and a few other mysterious data points.
Really, it's an arbitrary "scorecard" designed to get Twitterers to constantly visit the site to see their ranking. And it works, so I'll give credit to Internet marketing company HubSpot, which runs Twitter Grader, for creating a "popularity contest" marketing tool that's also fun for users. Still, anyone who takes their "Twitter Grade" seriously is losing perspective.
But Twitter Grader also includes a user's overall numerical rank relative to all other Twitter accounts. For example, DatamationBlog's rank as of this moment is 28,848 out of 1,402,143.
So Twitter Grader counts 1.4 million Twitter users (if that figure represents something else other than total Twitter users as estimated by Grader, maybe someone from HubSpot can explain it to me). As to why that total is so far below what Compete.com and others estimate for total Twitter users, I don't know.
But I do know this: According to Grader, the total number of Twitter users reached 1 million on Jan. 16, less than six weeks ago. Now it's past 1.4 million. That's fast growth.
On an anecdotal level, I've noticed a marked increase in DatamationBlog's number of unsolicited followers in recent weeks. In other words, more and more people are starting to follow our Twitter account without us first following theirs. Is it because we're becoming more visible? Is it because there are more new Twitter users entering the fray? Are companies catching on to the craze and imploring employees to join so they're not left behind?
Beats me, but I welcome all new followers and will gladly follow most of them back. I enjoy using Twitter and I believe we're in the early stages of sharp growth for the microblogging site. And I promise I'll never really care what my "Twitter Grade" is.
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