Simon Dickson, principal consultant at Puffbox, writes stuff about e-government, online news and politics. Some important people read it.

Barely a third of Tweeting is via the website

20 February 2009 2 ,

Some fascinating data published on Techcrunch reveals the usage patterns behind Twitter. Less than a third of updates (I think that's what they're measuring?), just 32% are posted via the web interface. The two leading Adobe Air-based clients, Tweetdeck and Twhirl, account for 23% between them; Twitterfeed's automated RSS postings put it fourth, ahead of (wow!) a paid-for iPhone app, Tweetie. And although Twitter doesn't seem an entirely natural fit with most Blackberry users, Twitterberry is at no6.

I see all sorts of implications in this ranking: the fact that a clear majority of use of 'a website' isn't via the web, showing what good things can happen when you offer an API; an endorsement of Adobe Air's cross-platform approach, coupled (potentially) with Air's relative friendliness to the less technical, more creative developer; and the fact that people really are prepared to pay actual cash for something like Tweetie, when there are perfectly decent alternatives (like Twitterfon or Twitterrific) in the iPhone app store. (And for the record: two of the top five are UK-based - Tweetdeck and Twitterfeed.)

  • Hey, that's me you're talking about when you say "doesn't seem an entirely natural fit"; I'll take that as a compliment about my individuality :-)

  • thats great that you are talking about the twitter api,a good example of searching with the twitter api is on twiogle.com because you can search on twitter and google at the same time.

Got something to say? Say it.

Stop wasting your time RSS feed

Let us tell you when there's new stuff to read at puffbox.com, by subscribing to the RSS feed.

Go on, show your face

If you want your photo to appear beside any comments you leave here, hop over to Gravatar and upload a picture of yourself. Otherwise, we'll just assume the machine-generated monster is a fair likeness.

Tag cloud

Puffbox.com archives

Search

Alan's comments feed

By popular demand: the comments feed

Ancient history

For posts during 2006 or 2007, Simon's old blog's archives are still available.