Us twitterers are used to seeing Mr. Failwhale. We’ll be getting accustomed to seeing him a lot more if the traffic statistics released by comScore late Tuesday are any indication. Traffic to the microblogging site has nearly doubled in just the past 60 days.
Worldwide, nearly 10 million unique visitors came to Twitter during the month of February, up from around 5 million in December 2008. Year over year, the service has registered a 700 percent increase in traffic, says comScore.
Some may think our youth are driving this growth as they seem to be the most apt to employ social networking tools. That is not true, says the firm. The majority of the growth in Twitter is being driven by the 25-54 age group, with the 45-54 segment the most likely to be visiting the site.
That may seem odd to many, but consider the rapid growth in twittering by professionals. It’s a pretty safe bet that most of these folks are above the age of 25, and many will likely be quite a bit beyond that.
comScore doesn’t have data ready for March yet, but it says it appears to be another “huge” month for Twitter.
Either way, the increased strain of more tweets is likely going to bring the failwhale around much more often. While the site has made some effort to improve capacity and its code, its no escaping the system was not built for the way users employ it (the company itself has admitted that fact).
Twitter is having some serious problems in staying up following the Netherlands’ 2-1 come-from-behind upset of World Cup favorite Brazil Friday. The social networking site has found it hard to stay up during the event, frequently coming down following the final whistle of major matches.