New data from stat-tracking firm Experian finds that U.S. Twitter users are now spending 2 hours and 12 minutes per month on Twitter.com reading and replying to tweets. That’s up from 1 hour and 51 minutes last year. However, the time spent during any given Twitter session has declined. In November 2010, a typical Twitter session was 13 minutes, 12 seconds, down from last year’s average of 15 minutes, 12 seconds.
This suggests that users are “seeking more frequent quick hits,” says Experian, “rather than spending longer periods of time reading through posts.”
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Average Visits Up, Year-over-Year
The new report also shows that the average number of visits is up year-over-year (data measured from November 2009 to November 2010). The average number of visits rose 37%, says Experian, from 7.3 visits per month in November 2009 to 10 visits per month as of November 2010.
However, the raw numbers show a decline. In November 2009, 9.54 million U.S. adults visited Twitter.com during the past 30 days, while in November 2010, only 8.25 million did.
This is the chart Experian posted, however. What’s with the dates “2013” and “2014?” That’s probably a mistake. We’re pretty sure they were looking at data from 2009 and 2010. Hey, typos happen. Let’s not go by the chart.
In any event, declining visits to Twitter.com isn’t any reason for concern. Although Experian doesn’t make note of this, this is clearly more indicative of the growing number of mobile Twitter users who now primarily access Twitter via their phones (over 40% of tweets are posted from mobiles), as opposed to visiting the website Twitter.com from a computer. It also doesn’t track the numerous Twitter client applications currently in use, including official offerings from Twitter for devices like the iPhone, iPad, or Android and BlackBerry smartphones as well as the new desktop app Twitter for Mac.
If anything, this data is only a slice of the overall pie. All it really shows that Twitter remains popular, that popularity is growing, but accessing the site through a desktop browser is trending down.
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