It’s been a while since the last update on Twitter’s UK traffic, but today, Robin Goad at Hitwise released this graph:

He also had this to say:

UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased 6-fold since the start of the year and 32-fold over the last 12 months. Last week, Twitter was the 50th most visited website in the UK, and the 5th most popular social networking site. To put that figure in context, last week Twitter received more UK Internet visits than the Daily Mail, RightMove, MSN UK Search, Directgov, and all retail websites with the exception of eBay, Amazon UK, Play.com and Argos.

I should also add the usual caveat: the service is probably even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications were included, the numbers would be even higher.

I’ve not much more to add – Twitter’s meteoric rise continues (as does that of social media in general), brands need to take notice. Period.

Update: Neville Hobson covers comScore Media Metrix’s more recent release of worldwide traffic data for Twitter.

Compared to the graph covering the 12 months up until January, that’s astounding growth (as that itself was just a few weeks ago):

To quote Hitwise’s Robin Goad:

Last week Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st, placing above online heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100), easyJet (101), Digital Spy (103) and Money Supermarket (105).

However, the service is likely even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers would be even higher.

Now of course, you might think this was down to the Stephen Fry effect, but we couldn’t possibly comment.*

What will be interesting if Twitter really does go mainstream (which until today, I can’t say I really thought was going to happen), is that, unlike Facebook, Twitter seems to exhibit the same sort of power law relationships as blogs do. Which means the bigger it gets, the more effective work we’ll be able to do for our clients through it…

*disclosure: Stephen is a client of ours and we helped get him going on Twitter.

Update: Drew Benvie on who all these new users are.

Following on from our recent compendium of social media traffic growth, Robin Goad has posted Hitwise’s latest stats about Twitter’s phenomenal growth in the UK:

Twitter was one of the fastest growing websites in the UK last year, and it shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, the service is even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party were included, the numbers would be even higher. Many people seem to find Twitter addictive: the average amount of time that people spend on Twitter.com has more than trebled from less than 10 minutes a year ago to half an hour now.

Twitter receives the largest amount of its traffic from the USA, but its penetration is greater in the UK market. For the week ending 17/10/09 twitter.com ranked as the 291st most visited website in the UK, accounting for 0.024% of all Internet visits; while in the USA it ranked 350th, picking up 0.020% of all Internet visits.

Twitter is still most popular with younger users in urban areas, but its appeal is broadening as it grows. The fastest growing age group of users is 35-44 year olds, who now account for 17.3% of UK visitors to twitter.com.

Twitter is becoming an important source of Internet traffic for many sites, and the amount of traffic it sends to other websites has increased 30-fold over the last 12 months.

This follows on from yesterday’s US Hitwise data from Heather Dougherty, pointing out that Twitter is now more popular than Digg.com:

We’ve been experimenting using Twitter as part of our campaigns for a while now, and also helped Stephen Fry get going on Twitter, but although these figures are heading in the right direction, Twitter is still far from mainstream and you need to think carefully about what impact any commercial use of Twitter is likely to achieve before investing any significant resources in it.

While we’re on the subject, you could find out why people use Twitter, see Chris’ commentary on why the British tabloids are so hostile towards Twitter or even follow me on Twitter.

Update: also see Twitter: was there a Ross / Fry effect? and more recently, Twitter’s UK traffic trebles in a month.

An almost unbelievable couple of graphs from Robin Goad at Hitwise, the first showing that 10.09% of all UK internet visits last week were to ‘Social Networking and Forums’.

And the second showing Facebook’s inexorable growth.

There’s some more in depth data available in Hitwise’s UK Social Networking Update from July this year, and it’s worth remembering these sort of growth curves apply across social media, with this graph showing a similarly stratospheric rise in UK blog traffic.

As Robin Goad said at the time:

over the last 3 years UK Internet traffic to out Blogs and Personal Websites category has increased by 208%, compared to 70% for News and Media. Another interesting fact is that the market share of blogs is greater in the UK than the USA: 1.09% and 0.73% respectively in May.

The trend also seems to apply even to Twitter

Again, a nice quote from Robin Goad:

UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America. Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it’s getting there.

I’d also point out that the Twitter data above pre-dates the Stephen Fry effect (disclosure: Stephen is a client of ours and we helped get him going on Twitter).

Roll on 2009…

Update 21st Jan ’09 – The latest UK Twitter stats.